somewhere, there's a place for us, a young and the restless fanfic

somewhere, there's a place for us
author: Erika (as in me!)
rating: T
summary: It's not how the world ends but rather, how their story begins; there's still a bang and a whimper. Billy Abbott & Victoria Newman in fifty different ways. BillyVictoria.
show: Young & the Restless
pairing: Billy Abbott & Victoria Newman
dedications: to all of the lovely folks over at Sinful Desires and the totally cool kids of the Genoa City Chronicles Fanfiction forum. this is for every Billy&Victoria addict out there. this is all this for you guys.
notes: this is just obscenely long & it's like a lot of pages long on MS Word. i'm sorry, sincerely sorry. this was actually supposed to be mere sentences long, but it turned into…this. so, i'm just gonna apologize in advance – but on the upside, i started this last January. writing this is like…giving Fanfiction birth. i was trying to decide whether it should be split into two parts but for me, it would have been better to just writing this in one long swoop. enjoy, guys. oh, and i went a little berserk with the inner thoughts in parentheses and the metaphor-like stuff.
disclaimer: sigh. we're back on this, aren't we? no, i merely make these characters do my bidding and giving them back to CBS and the Bell Family, understand? i don't own Titanic, Pride & Prejudice and West Side Story where the title actually comes from. Any other references aren't mine either like Star Wars, Scrabble etc. people you don't recognize or aren't familiar with, however, are all my brainchildren.

Candle [kandl] — a long slender piece of tallow or wax with an embedded wick that is burned to give light.

PROLOGUE

Ever watch a candle as it glows against a dark area and burns so brightly it can't be contained?

Victoria Newman always admires her father, always wants to make him happy and get the Ever Unachievable Victor Newman Seal of Approval. She's been groomed from birth to run Newman Enterprises one day, bringing competition to their knees as she signs deals and then crushes them in the palm of her manicured hand because Daddy's going to praise her business ethic and that's all she ever wants.

She does Japan for him – because he says so and his word is the law.

But now, Victoria Newman (read: soon to be Abbott because she really can't wait and loves Billy so much) is getting married and all she wants is for her father to walk her down the aisle.

All she wants is every girl's dream but the reality is she's not every girl.

Victor calls her wedding a farce, her fiancée a drunk, a gambler, a womanizer and an alcoholic because Victor's people have Billy's background—the proof of her fiancé's indiscretions (Daddy doesn't know him like she does) sealed in a bright manila envelope and ultimately, her dad doesn't believe in her anymore.

(Here's something Victoria realizes as the tears pool in her blue eyes: maybe he never believes in her to begin with.)

"You know what, Dad? Nothing Billy does will ever hurt me the way you're hurting me right now."

Breathe in, blow candle out and watch the flame masquerading as a daughter's lifelong admiration die and fade away to nothing.

Temptation [temp-tey-shun] — the act of tempting; enticement or allurement.

Victoria Newman doesn't care how good-looking Billy Abbott is. Honestly, she could care less.

Actually she really can't stand the sight of him in any way because he wields Restless Style like a damn weapon and calls destroying people with eloquent words, "the finest in journalism". That would only apply because she's a Newman but her private life doesn't guarantee that bastard a Pulitzer Prize.

He smirks. She glares.

(it's just journalism, sweetheart.)

Victoria makes a mistake and yeah, she sleeps with Deacon Sharpe (definition: a step down from being classified as a Human Being). The encounter is just a meaningless tangle of limbs, rumpled sheets that chafe against her skin. Deacon's hands intertwine with the brown hair styled like a Newman heiress. And Victoria's lips crash against Deacon's so hard, it almost makes her forget about the wedge that is widening between her and JT (they used to be so in love, right under Brad Carlton's nose) and dear God, Deacon's tongue is in her mouth and her gag reflexes are fighting madly.

Her hair is messy, rosy lipstick smudged across her face, tears show up while Victoria tries to breathe and dear God, what has she done?

Dubai is supposed to fix this and put her marriage back to the way it is because she loves JT and she loves Reed. In the confines of her home, Victoria is allowed to feel spun and wound up to her limit. It's her right to feel like the earth cracks precariously underneath her heeled boots.

That bastard airs her closely-bound secrets and puts them on display for the world to see.

And that smile of his won't change her resolve in loathing Billy Abbott.

(Here's something that crosses Victoria after she belts him one at Jimmy's and she stalks away: she's never seen eyes that blue.)

Victoria is not going to admit it but very first kiss in the courtroom leaves her with knots in her stomach, that fluttering feeling that travels down all the way to her pedicured toes.

In fact, Victoria's not tempted in the least.

She can't be because the Newman-Abbott battle lines are just too deep to cross.

Silk [silk] — the soft, lustrous fiber obtained as filament from the cocoon of the silkworm.

When Victoria wakes up, the sun filters in her bedroom through the blinds and makes pretty intricate patterns on the walls. It hits her: this is her home with Billy; motherhood comes barreling into her life for the second time after Reed.

And it's her wedding day, Victoria thinks as a smile starts to grow on her face.

Getting the sleep out of her eyes, she looks around and naturally, Billy is nowhere to be found but there's a note on her side of the bed – folded in half and tied with an ivory-coloured silk ribbon to close it and Margaret written on the front. The ribbon glints and catches light just like her engagement ring.

Victoria gently pulls the silk ribbon out of its bow and giggles – actually genuinely giggles; something that bubbles up in her stomach, goes up and encircles her heart and then escapes.

(Maybe it's the hormones and maybe it's love, but yeah, Victoria is happy.)

Margaret,

You're a heavy sleeper but I won't hold that against you.

I'm running errands before the moment we make you an Abbott permanently this time. You just make yourself even more beautiful than you already are and I will see you when you walk down the aisle.

Give our baby a kiss for me.

Jim

PS. I love you.

Victoria lets out a happy sigh because this is actually happening. She is actually going to get married on the lawn of their happy home and become Mrs. William Abbott because this is right. It feels right. The comforter bunches around her feet and she drops the note on her side on the vintage (because Billy's the Self-Proclaimed connoisseur of vintage) wooden night table.

She glances at her now-flat belly and smiles.

"Hear that, Baby," she says, placing a protective hand on her stomach. "Your Daddy and I are getting married today. Then we'll all be a family – your daddy, me, your big brother Reed and your big sister Delia," Victoria smiles, lightly rubbing her belly. "We all love you very much."

Victoria glances up at the ceiling, running a hand through her morning bedhead before throwing the covers off.

For one day, she'll put the image of her father defaming Billy and outright refusing to walk her down the aisle out of her head. This sunny day fully illustrates how she feels. It's a day of joy and careful optimism. Maybe, yes, the Newman-Abbott feud runs deep. But it's a nineteen fifties style wedding and Victoria has this little, gnawing feeling that both families will be drawing out their switch blades and battling it out West Side Story style.

"Victoria," she says to herself, like she's prepping for a crucial business meeting. But it's so much bigger and so much more significant (the heart wants what it wants; her heart wants Billy) than a boardroom, "it's your wedding day. Everything will be fine."

Before she gets up to start her day as a pregnant bride, Victoria runs the ivory silk ribbon through her grasp, its texture smooth through her fingers.

Cover [kuhv-er] — to hide the action of another by providing an alibi.

The marriage is fake and Victoria is okay with it.

She's okay with it being never declared legal because getting married with spicy Jamaican rum cake dancing on her tongue and the liquid, warm brown version in her veins is not her.

Oh, and Victoria is all blingy and she's giggling – these steel drums are freaking beautiful. But love lizards on the wall with their beady eyes still make her skin crawl.

But yeah, she's not married to Billy anymore. In the grand scheme of things, that is probably the best thing and it's her own brand of Sensible Logic. Victoria can just easily slip back into being Victor Newman's daughter.

(What a good little solider she is, falling in line so obediently.)

Domestic bliss in Billy's trailer is a shattered fantasy that is just doomed from that start. She's a realist and the reality sets in. It's just fun and there are no real emotions involved. This – whatever This is just something that makes Victoria (sortakindamaybe) enjoy Billy's company when they're not making out and doing Other Things.

Logically, this Totally Undefined Thing has to end. And goodbye sets the precedent for ending things.

So, why not?

Then why does Victoria feel something close to disappointment? She's not supposed to because it's too Insane for comprehension and it's not…right.

"So, it turns out the marriage wasn't legal."

"Oh," Billy says, and then jokingly adds, "Damn the legal system for being a party pooper."

"Yeah," Victoria replies, laughing before she means to. She glances around the trailer before tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She clears her throat and holds out her small hand. This is the only Semi Civil Way to make a clean break. "Goodbye, Mr. Newman."

"Goodbye, Mrs. Abbott."

And then his hand encloses around hers. There's also a small warm tingling sensation as always but let's not talk about that.

you'll be back to where it began, baby.

Victoria has nothing against pickles yet she's standing on the doorstep of Billy's trailer. Sure, she wants a pickle or two – maybe not now but somewhere down the line. Grasping the jar of pickles, Victoria draws back for a split second before rapping her knuckles on the screen door of the trailer. Maybe her heart is racing and there's a sound similar to blood rushing through her ears.

She's fully aware that her phone vibrates for the infinite time. It's Victor because of course, the general needs his troops. Naturally.

Billy opens the door and Victoria blinks.

"Hi."

"Hey," he steps aside and she walks in because he just knows. Victoria knows this isn't goodbye to deal with. His eyebrows furrow together as she wordlessly holds pickle jar out to him and Victoria watches the corners of his lips curl. "Pickle jar?"

"Well," Victoria explains like it actually makes sense. It sounds much better and less illogical in her head, "I need this opened."

(It doesn't and Billy's laughing at her.)

"Really?" he loops an arm around her waist.

"Yeah," Victoria sort of whispers against his lips. "The lid is really screwed on tight."

She's not sure who kisses who first but Billy's lips are warm and just fit against hers, and the pickle jar is a forgotten cover to go back to where This starts. Clothes are in the process of coming off as Billy presses his lips against her mouth, cheek, right down her throat and then stopping at that little juncture between her neck and collarbone.

Victoria loses one of the earrings Nick buys her for Christmas.

Let's not get into when their mothers burst in like they're delinquent, irresponsible teenagers and the pickle jar never really gets open and there's no such things as goodbyes and clean breaks.

(because the pickles make a Semi Decent cover.)

Fall [fawl] — to drop or descend under the force of gravity, as to a lower place through loss or lack of support.

"Mac, hi."

"Hi, Victoria."

"So, uhm, how's JT's doing?"

"He's actually doing really well. And he'd actually like it if you'd come over. Reed misses you too."

"JT's at the hospital still, right?"

"Oh, no," (this is where Victoria can hear the relief in her voice and for once, they actually for once—not that she hates Mac but Reed is her only child and she can love him, selfishly as well), "he just got home a while ago."

Victoria sighs, relieved, "That's good to hear." She presses her cellphone to her ear, hearing the distant jingle of her car keys, while walking through the doors of Crimson Lights. "I'm on my way."

"Okay, great. Goodbye, Victoria."

"Bye, Mac."

In every person's lifetime, Victoria believes, there's always that near-experience (read: refer to being in a coma for Reed's Birth) that will cause change in the status quo and causes ripples in the course of a life – no matter how big or small. Victoria is sorry that she allows her need for her father's approval to take front and center until her marriage is changed into something unrecognizable and Reed doesn't help her bake cookies on quiet peaceful Friday nights anymore.

Maybe the smallest part of her will always love JT as Reed's father and yes, they're going to make co-parenting and step-parenting work – all five of them: him, her, Reed, Billy and Mac, but she's sorry Victoria damages a good thing because she needs to make Daddy happy.

Victoria won't let her relationship with Billy fall away this time.

"Hey Reed, how about we go out and get some ice-cream so we could let your mom and dad talk," Mac suggests and of course, what child will actually turn down ice-cream? But Reed's face reads apprehension all over it. A twinge of guilt hits Victoria near her heart—right where her heartstrings are.

Reed turns to his father. "You and Mommy aren't gonna fight, are you?"

JT shakes his head. "Nah, Buddy," he says, glancing in Victoria's direction as if they have to stand together and actually go forward with getting along. "Your mom and I just have some stuff to go over."

Reed looks to Victoria and she kneels at his level, stroking his blond hair.

"Is it okay if I go for ice-cream?"

"Of course, it is," she kisses his cheek, buttons up his jacket a little more so he's warm. "Get two scoops for me?"

Mac and Victoria lock gazes for a split second, some kind of quiet understanding passing between them.

"Okay, Mommy."

(Here's something Victoria takes a while to actually realize: she can almost respect Mac in a weird way for loving Reed as much as she does—anyone who gives her son that much love is sort of okay in her book.)

Sometimes, there are no words that need to be said when one knows the other so well (they are in sync and in love once upon a time) but it gets to a place where things can't go back to the way they once are way back when. It's not the Easy Comfortable Silences when Victoria and JT settle into at home on the Ranch (before Dubai, before Deacon, before Reed has to go because of The Newman Influence – you can't change blood, you can't erase chromosomes and DNA, and before big fat divorce papers in her mailbox).

"Here, uh, sit down."

"Okay," she agrees and then adds sincerely. JT is the father of her son regardless if nothing else. She'll always love him in that respect, "I'm honestly glad you're okay."

"Me too, Victoria," JT replies, heaving a sigh and combing a hand through his hair. "I mean, just barely but I'm taking it one day at a time."

"Yeah," and then a pause and a heartbeat in her chest thuds, "that's good."

The silence is loud enough as it is.

It's one of those Borderline, Awkward, Post-Divorce Silences, permeating through the apartment and it saddens Victoria a bit.

(It's all come down to this.)

"So, I was thinking on my way here that we should really discuss the holidays and splitting them up. Right now, there's Thanksgiving, Reed's birthday, and Christmas coming up – "

"Victoria, I have something to tell you. I hate that I have to do this to you," JT says, glancing at her. He almost looks like it's painful to discuss the holidays and who gets Reed when. "And I feel like we were starting to find common ground here and actually getting along. So, I'm sorry."

Victoria doesn't understand and now she's confused.

"Okay," she suggests, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It's about being fair. "If you want, we can split it between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so that – "

JT shakes his head, "No, no. That's not it. Nothing like that."

And then Victoria is shoved down the rabbit hole – dark and bottomless and gravity's a bitch.

Victoria starts to feel a bit like Alice because everybody's rationale makes no damn sense to her all of a sudden and they're maybe kinda crazy.

But I don't want to go among mad people, says Alice because Wonderland is too foreign of a place – just like the concept of Victoria being two hours away from her son, her only child.

Oh, but you can't help that, replies that Cheshire Cat, with his trademark grin. We're all mad here.

(Victoria is far, far away from reality now.)

Washington, D.C is cultured and JT's so sorry (ohdeargod) but he and Mac are going to move there and work for a non-profit. That means Reed has to go with them and she loses another baby in less than six months. That's twisted poetic justice in action unfolding and untangling right in front of her eyes.

Of course, let's think about how much Reed will love D.C and how he'll get used to it. She can't, though, because all this is doing is cutting her heart out her chest while her head throbs from the back of her eyes. She wants to scream, yells to rip something to shreds and proclaim how unfair this is. Does a mother's love not count for anything? Or, is it just trivialized because the law says so? It sounds cliché, it sounds dramatic and hell, it even sounds kinda out there and hell, she's a little spoiled but damnit, this is unfair. It's unfair both ways.

Why would JT spring this on her now?

There is just angersadnesshurt all over – surrounding her, drowning her and Victoria can't breathe.

"—just think of the stuff Reed can experience in DC. And it's not like you won't see him. It's just a two hour flight. You and Billy can fly out anytime and—"

(Shutupshutup.)

"Shut up!" she screams, trying not to tremble. "Just shut up!"

"I really don't want to argue with you."

"This is way beyond an argument and you know that! You're just cutting my heart out, that's all."

She passes Argument Avenue and is about to cross the intersection between Furious and Outraged Boulevard. How is a simple two hour flight every now and then supposed to remedy not being there for her little boy?

"What—what happened to joining the police academy?"

"After my accident, the electric shock damaged my heart, and that's out of question," JT explains, heaving a sigh. "I can't join the police force because it'll be too strenuous."

"Well, Reed has family here and you're talking about taking my only child across the country! I can't be there when he gets sick or when he has a bad dream. Genoa City is his home. He needs me," Victoria explains, her mind unable to wrap around the concept of not seeing her baby boy. Chocking back a sob and using all of her restraint to force back tears to no avail, she sniffles. "We bake cookies on Friday evenings and you know I have to sing to him so he'll get to sleep. No," Victoria argues back (because it's too late for niceties), with all of the resolve she can manage in the world. Her voice sounds steady to her own ears, "you're not taking my son across state lines."

JT only replies, sounding annoyingly apologetic, to her ears anyway. "I have sole custody."

"Yeah, well," Victoria grabs her purse, still so angry it makes her see hot white polka dots. Vance Abrams or at least Michael – good, reliable Michael Baldwin – have to seriously find some Legal Loophole in all of this. As Reed's mother, she has to have some legal precedence over this, "if someone took Mac's baby, you wouldn't like it very much. So, no – there is no hell I'm letting you leave with my little boy!"

And then she storms out, taking even strides even though her legs are shaky and her world is spinning.

(Oh, dear God, Victoria's going to fall flat on her ass again.)

"Wait! Victoria, I—"

There's nothing JT can possibly say after this because this right here, is tied with using silver handcuffs as a wedding accessory and having yet another miscarriage as her Worst Moment Ever.

don't let me fall. catch me if you can.

Victoria doesn't get into details when Billy comes home.

And Billy doesn't ask too much partly because he knows her so well.

(It's the eyes that give her away, and exposes what Victoria knows she can't hide from him.)

So, she lets her husband hold her close while he plants light but oh so warm kisses in her hair and that's the parachute that softens her descent.

Music [myoo-zik] — an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.

Here's something Billy Abbott realizes from the bat:

he's all Bob Marley and Aerosmith while Vicki (he loves her too much to stick with convention and formalities now) is all Billy Joel and Nat King Cole. He also kinda realizes their differences run so deep – even their musical playlists are polar opposites.

It's those same differences that make the idea of Them work and mesh together.

(hell baby, we're genius.)

It's alright because Billy&Victoria like The Beatles a little more than the rest.

Maybe it's a Japanese thing.

Or maybe it's because the Japanese love their sake and karaoke as much as Billy loves the adrenaline rush he gets when he's just on top of a good scoop and he just knows it's going to be a good day.

But there Victoria is – not primped and proper like the princess she really is, but with her long hair tousled and free. She's grinning (yeah, she's kinda cute), singing and dancing (the girl has no rhythm at all) in front of the karaoke machine.

And then she waves him over and Billy isn't so sure anymore.

Billy remembers this particular song – its origins at the Walnut Grove Fall Fair – when he and Mac become Billy&Mac and they're voted Walnut Grove's Cutest Couple. He remembers winning Prom King and naturally, Brittany Hodges is supposed to win Prom Queen, but Mac does. In his teenaged (oh, the joys of being seventeen and stupid) mind, he and Mac are gonna make it to the end and that karaoke thing will be their thing.

They get to be as loud and as obnoxious as they want. And yeah, it's pretty awesome. The cheery beat stays implanted in the crevices of his brain, the lyrics engraved in his skull like a chisel to hard smooth marble.

But that's when Billy thinks life will just goes smooth after high school and he'll be with Mac forever&always because it's destiny or fate or some shit like that.

Sometimes, he's still seventeen and stupid.

At least now (when he's late twentysomething and all grown up), Billy's aware and that's progress. And he's more sure that Fate and Destiny works in different ways.

Here's the opening thought to the soundtrack of his life: he scoffs at forever because nothing says love more than being a groom about to walk the death mile and being thrown into the role of being the father of this beautiful little girl he's not ready for.

But he's another thought: he'd kill – like legitimate murder – for Delia and now, and Victoria isn't supposed to mess with him in that Holy Shit, I'm In Definite Like with the Ice Princess kind of way.

Victoria smiles at him. She still dances. She still sings.

Billy complies, and joins her while they're all loud and musical together.

(It's probably the worst karaoke Billy does and yes, he can live with the fact that he's tone deaf but it's sorta fun doing this with her.)

Dance [dans] — to move one's feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps, especially to the accompaniment of music.

"Billy, hey – what's up?"

"Hey, man, I need to ask you about something…legal."

Rafe sighs, fingering the rim of his Crimson Lights coffee cup. "I've learned quickly that being your best friend means I don't question you – just go along for the ride," Rafe says like it's the truth (partly because it's part of the Billy Abbott Friendship Clause). "What do I have to bail you out of now?"

"Don't judge me. I haven't done anything illegal."

"Fine," Rafe tosses an apologetic look at his date, Steven, who nods and gestures to the bathroom. Steven smiles him, turning the corner and then Rafe focuses on the cell phone pressed against his ear and the person on the other end, "what do you need advice on?"

This is probably the only thing – nah, screw maybes and probablys because this makes perfect, clear and logical sense. Everything will work out this way and Billy can't stand legalities but he hates big, faceless bureaucracies more. It's not like he'll walk into the Instant Baby Store and pick the ideal baby to tie their little blended family of five.

Billy is just testing the waters.

(He'll swim like hell to be a father again before he drowns and his Conscience threatens to choke him. What's a little lie, ahem—embellishment gonna do?)

Billy clears his throat and feels Rafe's silent disdain through the phone.

"How does one go about buying a baby?"

"I'm gonna to say this honestly," Rafe declares, and Billy rolls his eyes. "As your friend, you have seriously reached a new level of crazy. Are you serious right now?"

"Come on. What did I say about judging me? And yeah, it's a serious question."

The attorney relents as the really cute guy he meets at Gloworm comes back to his seat, "Billy, as your attorney, I'll look into it and represent you when it all goes bad. Now – I'm kind of occupied. But I'll get on it, though."

"I knew you'd do me a solid. Thank you," and then Billy smirks, good-naturedly. Crazy Town is getting occupied (he's probably the freaking mayor). And really, it's been a while since it's been Billy&Rafe – best friends, brothers from different mothers. "Now when you say 'occupied', you mean…"

Rafe chuckles, taking in Steven's green eyes while he's kinda enjoying the sensation of Steven's foot gently hooked around his underneath the table.

"His name is Steven. I'm on a date – actually one of several with him. It's, uh, great actually."

"Ah, gotcha. You crazy kids continue and we'll catch up at Jimmy's later or somethin'. Remember, it's important."

They're (because suddenly, it's not Rafe and Steven characterized as two gay guys who spend their free time just hanging out but now, it's Steven&Rafe and it's nice) having a little dance of Advanced Footsies.

"Understood, Billy."

Billy hangs up and sighs, a sense of relief washing over him.

Victoria comes out of the restroom, and Billy can start making her happy with the one thing, they actually both want.

"Who was that?"

"Oh," Billy answers, pocketing his phone. He kisses her. "That was Rafe. He's in love again."

Victoria sighs, and she's still sad but she smiles. "Oh, okay. That's good for him."

Victoria's eyes don't shine the way the way they used to. He misses the way they dance and gleam when she smiles from ear to ear. She cries more, and tries to act all controlled when he comes around. And then he just holds her as she cries (this is all me and it's all my fault), mumbling apologizes (there's nothing you did or didn't do to cause this, baby) that all run and bleed together into his shoulder.

That's when Billy's most pissed off because it's the same sad dance with depressing background music.

And yeah, it sucks being powerless.

(He misses Reed already.)

DeeDee's just growing everyday and he loves dancing around with her to Bumpy the Camel, having father-daughter tea parties and giving her so many Piggyback Rides that she holds on to him for dear life. She laughs, and runs as fast her little feet will carry her when Billy picks her up from Tiny Tots (sure, there won't be a Billy&Chloe but there's Cordelia Abbott's Mom & Dad and that's enough).

And Reed is probably the best stepson, so Billy lucked out in terms of The Stepson Pool. He's just so smart and articulate but he's not shy about speaking his mind if he has to (that's all Victoria right there). It kind of makes Billy think about how things will be if he and Victoria make another life with some of his quirks combined with the best parts of her.

Really, if they can bring two amazing kids like Reed – okay, let's just dance around the fact that Walnut Grove has the Billy Abbott—Jeffrey Todd Hellstrom rivalry chronicled between the pages of the senior high school yearbook – and his little girl, Delia – she's the only thing that Billy doesn't regret from openly cheating on Chloe and generally amping up the Ass Factor – into the world at separately times in their lives, then why not?

Here's something Billy's already planned down the line but hasn't told Victoria: the day his father-in-law dies, he'll most likely join Jack on an Abbott Brothers Celebratory Jig on El Moustache's grave because Victor fucking cheats him out of kissing his pregnant bride when he really wants to and being a father again.

(So much for hearing that seven week heartbeat, right?)

"I'm guessing Rafe sent you?"

"Mmhmm."

"Okay, uh – my name is –"

"No names. I make the connection to get the item you want. You wire the funds, and I disappear."

"Good. Because if you could make the connection tonight, I'll throw in a bonus."

Dancing is like lying: you spin these stories, the intent acting as the beat that makes you want to move. It's the backbeat to something that can turn out to be wonderful and believable or you miss a beat and it crashes and burns, flames almost like those of Hell.

So, yeah – Billy verbally dances and Electric Slides his way into giving Victoria the chance to be a mother again. She'll never know of Primrose DeVille and the two million dollars. Victoria won't know of the hoops he jumps through to get the baby from the crazy broad either. It's for the best and Billy would do anything just to see her smile.

A little bundle of pink and flailing limbs is placed in Billy's arms for the first time and dear god, she's perfect and absolutely beautiful.

"She's perfect."

It's like this little child reaches up and clenches his heart with her little hand and squeezes it – squeezes it so tightly he nearly forgets to breathe. His heartstrings are tugged but they break like fragile guitar strings. As if almost instinct, Billy places a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"So, Mr. Abbott, you still think two million isn't worth having this little face stare up at you every day?" Primrose taunts and takes the baby back, cradling it in her arms when she fusses. "It's your decision."

It's a dangerous little dance – dancing across the fine line between The Wrong Thing and Morality-Induced Common Sense.

Then again, Billy is still the Ultimate Risk-Taker underneath his layers of new-found stability.

(Baby Black Market Roulette is his favourite game – didn't you know that?)

"I'm in," he decides, without missing a beat – no hesitancy, no uncertainty. This is Billy's Do Over Moment and he's not going to screw this up (daddy's still so sorry, DeeDee). Billy glares, while Primrose quirks an eyebrow. "Look lady, I give your money. You don't pawn the baby off somewhere else and screw me over, understand?"

(That's his daughter with Victoria. That's their baby.)

"Oh," Primrose smiles, knowingly. "Not to worry. Business dealings in our operation are always fair. Glad we have an understanding."

Here's something that throws Billy off guard: he sort of loves that little girl already. There's no way he's going to let the future dreams that dance on his eyelids when he holds Victoria in bed slip away.

It's not an option.

Wings [wings] — a similar structure with which gods, angels, demons, are conceived to be provided for the purpose of flying.

One of these days, Billy is going to have to stop replaying the event leading up to the day Colleen – she's nothing but plainly CeCe to him – dies. He'll have to stop himself to questions of, "what if CeCe doesn't go to cabin?" or "what if he doesn't give her the keys to the family cabin in the first place?" It's like a really bad movie Billy doesn't want to (makeitstop) sit through. He replays in his mind what life is like before Victor unleashes Mary Jane Benson (read: Patty Williams; the crazy former sister-in-law Billy never knows he has) on this town and his niece doesn't die in the crossfire.

Once again, though, of course Victor gets the best part of her which in turn allows him to be alive and be a First Grade Jerkoff, Asshole, King of the Douchebags etcetera; the list goes on and on.

(It always comes back to Victor.)

But Billy is here – still there, ever so present and a little bit guilty.

Here's some golden nuggets of knowledge: he still can't delete his niece from his contacts list a year later. Maybe, someday Billy will be ready and hell, he may change his mind and hold onto her name forever.

But he's not ready.

So, don't ask him because it may just drive him to get whiskey from his stash.

(It's weird but it's the one of the ways he holds onto his niece's memory for dear life.)

They're supposed to go to New York after Colleen comes back from being at the family cabin.

That's the plan and this one gets shot to Hell – watery grave or something like that.

It's going to be fun – to go back to the place they call home and Billy misses his big sister and Colleen seeing her mother and stepfather is an added bonus.

He remembers actually being pumped to go to New York with her for like a week.

(It'll be the Most Epic Week of 2009 because they're Billy&Colleen – taking names and kicking major ass. Then they're going to party at the Boom Boom Room, dance and be deliriously stupid because that's how they roll.)

"After you come back with a clear head, we're going to New York," Billy declares. "You and me."

"Ooh – may I ask why?" Colleen chuckles, and stirs the coffee stirrer around, watching the contents of her soy latte swirl around in her cup. She smirks knowingly, looking up at him through mascara coated eyelashes "Being thrown into the role of loving husband and devoted daddy did you in?"

Oh, she knows him so well.

Billy sighs deeply, his newest argument with Chloe fresh in his mind.

"Something like that."

"Ah."

"And it's not like I don't love my daughter. Because I do but," Billy pauses, mid-sentence and takes in more of his triple shot espresso. It's not exactly sunrise and the strongest tequila at Jimmy's. That's progress, "damn it, I don't know. It's not me. You know me, CeCe. I say 'screw it' and leap before I look. That sort of thing. Not this."

"That's code for hell, yes," she deducts because she knows him well enough to know that the Billy Abbott she knows hates being tied down. Especially if it's a girl like Chloe. "That actually sounds pretty good. But what if I were to bail?"

"No, no, Miss. Carlton, bailing isn't an option," he replies, in that playful bantering way only they know how, "because you're my partner in crime. It's mandatory. And I hear the lounge at Boom Boom Room has been renovated. You know we have to make an appearance."

"Because if we don't, the world will implode. Is that right?"

(Exactly.)

"See? That's why I love you, CeCe."

Colleen sips more of her latte and smiles, "It's a date," and then he smiles back. Little does he know, it's Billy's last conversation with her and the last time, she'll ever smile that signature smile at him again, "And hey, I love you too."

That's the last time he ever talks to her and the idea of hanging out in New York seems to sprout wings and fly away to nothing after she dies.

"Hi."

"Oh, hey," Billy says, when Victoria comes downstairs from her nap. "You're up."

Like second nature, he pulls her onto his lap and she fits. Billy can't believe he can love somebody so much like he can love Victoria – like he tries to sort of love Chloe because she's the mother of his child and at the end of the day, Billy will do anything and everything for his little girl, like he loves Mac in high school and like he loves Lily beneath the cesspool of lies.

Working on this new article for Restless Style loses its appeal today.

Victoria runs a hand through her hair, and sighs, "Yeah. I needed that," she pauses, arms loosely around his neck and gazes at him and questions softly, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

(No, not really.)

"Billy, I just realized what today was," she says, while her fingers caress his cheek. Without saying all of the words swirling around in her head, Victoria merely says, "I'm sorry. All I can tell you is that maybe you should be with your family tonight and do something to honour her memory."

"You're an Abbott too, you know."

She smiles and leans down to peck his lips, "And I love that," she then pulls away, "But you know what I mean."

And then Victoria hugs him while Billy hugs her back (yeahitslove) and as sad as today is, yeah, everything's gonna be okay.

"Thank you."

While Victoria goes to the club to have dinner with her mother, Billy speeds down the roads of Genoa City's roads to that little Chinese place him and Colleen both love. He buys all of her favourite dishes right down to the eggrolls because it's a Billy&Colleen thing to fight over the last one.

Billy thinks about Traci in New York the entire time.

(It's cheesy and corny but it's the truth: his love for his wife soars a little more each day.)

Sometimes, when things are really quiet and the demands of Restless Style don't blow up his phone and knock on his door, he can feel her there – the same way Dad appears once in a while to be his Moral Compass and give him a kick in the ass.

Every once in a while, Billy hears her voice somewhere in his mind.

(He's not crazy and strait jackets don't suit him very well.)

You became the son-in-law of the man who has my heart. I make out with your wife's ex-husband, Colleen says and then with a twinge of laughter no one but him hears and a little realization. How's that for ironic?

"Yeah," Billy whispers to nobody. That's all there is. "Ironic."

View [vyoo] — an instance of seeing or beholding; a conception of a thing.

"Be honest with me, Billy," she says, breaking the silence of their home. It's one of those rare nights where Reed and Delia are both at their house for the next few days. Right now, they're asleep. She plays with their intertwined fingers and Billy pressed a light kiss to her dark locks in a messy ponytail. He's not sure what kind of shampoo she uses, but it smells really good.

It's one of those nights where the smell of freshly baked (read: sort of baked but ultimately burnt around the edges) cookies are still wafting through every nook and cranny of the house long after the oven is turned off and the batter licked.

Oh, and they're still pregnant.

"About what?"

"Remember when we crossed paths at LaGuardia in New York?"

"Yeah," he recalls and feels his lips slightly tug upwards at the memory. He's flying from New York, armed with present for Delia's first birthday and she's coming in from some layover. Billy is still thinking the whole An Abbott and a Newman Airport Bar Joke can be funny with comedic timing. "Yeah, I remember."

Victoria shrugs, sighing, "I'm just curious. What did you think of me when we crossed paths that day?"

"What did you think of me?"

It's not like he's insecure; his self-image is pretty damn healthy and Billy bleeds swag. But you know, he just loves Victoria that much and wants immunity from the doghouse.

She turns around slightly to meet his eyes, trying to look offended but she smiles right through.

"I asked first."

"And I just want Immunity from being tossed into the Doghouse," Billy replies with a laugh. He's half-joking and Victoria groans and swats his bicep lightly. All he does is kiss her like he always does because her lips are full and pouty and she's sexy as hell. He pulls away, hand still on her cheek while her hand encloses over his. "There's my girl. Violent streak still intact."

Victoria merely rolls her eyes light-heartedly, leaves words unsaid, and goes back to cuddling (oh dear God, Billy actually cuddles and well, it's…nice).

"You're not avoiding the question," she whispers, voice sounding more distant and eyelids starting to feel like heavy weights.

Billy wraps his arms, gently, around his wife's now-slender middle.

He pressed another kiss to his wife's temple. "Sleep, now. Interrogate later."

When he actually crosses paths with Victoria at that airport in New York, she's still the daughter of the asshole that gets the best heart possible and Billy still wishes the son of a bitch dead – praying one day that CeCe's heart realizes what an undeserving place it's in and just stop beating.

Maybe, yeah, Billy is going to Hell for praying that but it's not a crime (and we're all going to Hell anyway so see you there while he's still young).

But then one day when Billy and Victoria (they're still Billy Abbott and Victoria Newman because they hate each other and can't be anything else or the world will explode, got it?) see more of each other than healthy and play around, he wakes up in his trailer alone and still the scent of her expensive perfume still lingers there.

She's starting to bleed into his subconscious too.

That's not in the Billy Abbott Plan of Life at all.

Sleeping with the enemy's daughter is just that – all fun and games because he's bored and she needs to get away from the marriage he helps destroy with his line of work. Victoria Newman is still annoying, a spoiled princess who avoids the concept of fun like a disease. The woman is probably born with a solid gold pole up that sweet ass so far, it's too damn heavy to pull.

(But the sex is awesome. That's his view and he's sticking to it.)

That's then. This is now.

That's before he realizes that Victoria actually can get a laugh or two out of him because she's funny. She actually has a fun side. She beats him at Beer Pong and Donkey Kong.

Victoria's nurturing and Dee Dee loves her already and that's the clincher. She's going to be an awesome mother to this baby.

And simply put, Billy just views this sleeping woman in his arms as his wife.

It's a while since he sees anyone as his wife and actually means it.

(He's one lucky son of a bitch and the sex is a million steps up from awesome now.)

Formal [fawr-muhl] — being in accordance with the usual requirements, customs, etc; conventional.

Let's get one thing straight: Billy Abbott is not, and will never be, a conventional guy.

That's the truth, he declares as he tosses back his shot of tequila with ease. It goes down smooth and slow, leaving a trail of fire downward but he's too busy mentally tripping out to care.

As always, Mac does (and he'll always love her for it).

"Billy, go home and find out if the pregnancy test is positive," Mac instructs and then her expression softens but still, she puts the tequila bottle behind the counter. "You never know and frankly, you should know."

He rolls in his eyes – maybe, in his head or whatever because this is Mackenzie Browning in all her glory, more goodwill and optimism than normal. Genoa City's own Mother Theresa, and he's not thinking that to be a smartass. Billy's just thinking that because it's true.

"Do you ever not care?" Billy deadpans. He just really wants to wallow and stew and then figure things out way later. It's his technique – hell, Billy may even get a patent or make it into his very own Olympic Sport.

Mac's stare with a quirked eyebrow in silent questioning only cuts through him.

"I'm sorry. You've known me for how long?" she picks up another tequila glass to clean, smiling a smile that throws Billy back into their high school days and smacks him with unintended nostalgia. "I can't in good conscience not care. Victoria may or not be pregnant. Go home to Victoria and find out. It's the right thing to do."

She sees the good in everybody, most of all him.

"I hate when you're right."

Mac merely chuckles.

(And it's best he leave Jimmy's; his buzz is long gone anyway.)

He breaks rules and doesn't think about it because throwing caution to the wind is easier. It's quick – like ripping off a band-aid really fast. Sure, the consequences always kick and scratch at the door of his Common Sense but that's life and Billy really hates being pigeon holed because society says so.

So, here's a giant metaphorical middle finger to being ordinary and Socially Correct.

That's the Billy Abbott Philosophy to Life – at least before John appears to show him his future (because death by crushing metal is the way to go, all the drunk and cool kids are doing it) and Victoria appears out of God Knows Where and pulls him out of the gutter.

Billy knows that his relationship (once he gets Victoria in a big ol' red heart etched on his skin, you don't go back and that's pretty much it) with her has unconventionalism written all over it in spades.

Of that, he's sure.

He has sex with her before he tolerates the Ice Princess.

Billy gets shit-faced, plastered and makes her Mrs. William Foster Abbott with sand between his toes and rum in his veins before he's sure of what he's feeling for her or if he really feels anything at all.

And then Billy knocks Victoria up – it's possible and yeah, his swimmers are pretty damn potent thank you very much – before he wants to make an honest woman out of her.

After they break up and make up, Billy buys this fifties style, Father Knows Best house from Gloria before they get married for real because sure, it crosses his mind sometimes. Forget there being a third attempt, the second time is the charm.

This is how Billy Abbott summarizes his relationship with Victoria in a nutshell: something that isn't really meant to be conventional from the start, but yeah, he loves her.

Billy's scared shitless about another child because he doesn't want to make mistakes and screw up the way he does with the first few months of Cordelia's life.

"Looks like you've made progress in getting your act together last time we spoke," John appears – or maybe, it's just his Conscience, the lines are kinda blurred. Billy watches Victoria play Red Light, Green Light with her son from afar through the fence at the park.

They laugh and run around and there are smiles all around.

Mother and son love each other to pieces, Billy knows that wholeheartedly. It makes him think of his baby girl DeeDee, this little person who has some parts of himself already. Ultimately, Billy is sometimes thrown off guard by his love for his daughter and how he'll be ready to break the kneecaps of the first boy to hurt her. Or anyone else in general for that matter.

This is the exact moment – right here at the park with his dad sort of there – that Billy stops being In Definitely, Complete Like with Victoria and starts being in love with her.

"And you've found happiness with Victoria."

Maybe those songs about love sneaking up on you are kinda true.

"Yeah, I have."

"So, what's the problem?"

Billy sighs, "What if I screw up? I'm not cut out for that life with the 2.5 kids and the golf on sunny weekends," he adds, more quietly, "I may even disappoint her because I can't give her what she wants."

His father merely chuckles.

"Oh, that's a given. You'll screw up."

(Oh, of course – everybody, living and not living, likes to bust his chops.)

"Thanks, Dad."

"But," John says, tone reassuring, "that's how it is with kids. They throw things at you, you wouldn't expect or believe."

Billy's just worried and what if he screws up again because let's be honest, everyone almost expects him to. Just like New Years Eve, when he's expected live fast and die young (only to join the ranks of the epically famous James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, baby) without anyone ever knowing.

"Son," John says, with silent understanding, "I remember when your mother told me she was pregnant with you. I was older and it still scared the pants off me," he smiles, and Billy can't help do the same but still there are a lot of thoughts pounding around in his head, making it hurt. It's not the tequila anymore, "I loved you when I saw you as I did all of my kids. I got to laugh with my kids, cry with them and worry about them when they didn't come home," John finishes, with a pointed glance at him because well, Billy's just seventeen and still stupid.

Billy sort of apologizes for that, "Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

"There was always Jabot – and believe me, I loved my work – but the best part of my day was when my children would come to me and say, 'I love you, Daddy'. Nothing will ever beat that. Remember when Chloe came to you and told you you were Delia's father. You wouldn't change that now, would you?"

Victoria gives Reed back (she doesn't want to) to Mac and walks home, right past him.

(He's not whipped or anything…just not ready to face possibly being a dad for the second time and stuff.)

No, he wouldn't change what Chloe did in hindsight. He loves Delia so much.

"No, I love my daughter but this is a bit different," Billy tries to reason but he should know, Dad won't buy it. Damn. It sounds better in his head. But he has this house with Victoria and he loves her more than anything. And as Mac says, Billy Abbott only has conquests and exes. "This isn't an episode of Father Knows Best where Princess winds up pregnant and everything's wrapped up in thirty minutes."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with Father Knows Best, son."

And Billy can do nothing but wonder what if?

"Well," John disappears and then re-appears on the swing set, amusement on his face, "you going to hang around and tie your shoe laces or something? Go after her, son. Just remember that you're in control of your destiny. Ask yourself this: are you ready to find happiness with someone you love?"

"I love her."

"There's your answer."

The question still hangs in September air and resonates in his mind. It's the first time in a while, Billy actually thinks and decides not to be impulsive.

Dad is gone — or maybe, he's never really here.

Really, though, Billy thinks as he sinks into an empty swing, maybe he's in control the way he live his life. It's always the way it's been.

But now, it's different.

Does he really want the whole life with the white picket fence (the house already has that so maybe it's Fate), two and a half children and even a dog or two? It could be great and bringing their kid here to play would be great. The image of Delia being a baby is slowly starting to fade away from memory because she's a toddler now.

He sighs and can still feel his dad around, it's all up to you.

He has choice. He has control, and as expected in true Billy Abbott fashion, he's gonna do this regardless of the naysayers and those who tell him he's, in plain terms, just crazy.

(Yeah, Billy decides he's ready because he loves Victoria that much.)

"Hey, Henry – yeah, it's Billy."

"Hey. How's my favourite magazine publisher slash owner?"

"Great," Billy replies, even though it's sort of a lie. "You think you can hook me up with something?"

The voice on the other end jokes, "Dude, no drugs. Just bling."

"Wow, I actually tolerated that. You got funnier," he replies, with sarcasm and half-false jest. Henry's not that funny – just a knowledgeable jeweler who likes to play with light sabers and has enough social awkwardness in him that it makes him lovable. And he's crossing three and a half years with his girlfriend, Morgan.

Henry replies on the other end, "Billy, excellent timing, my friend. I was just about to lock up. What can I help you with?"

Henry owns a little vintage jewelry store and well, Billy is still the Undisputed King of Everything Vintage. Billy stands and reaches into his back pocket for his car keys, phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear. Yeah, he's sure and willing to take the risk.

"An engagement ring."

"Sure," Henry agrees. "My kid sister just got married and you know, how me and weddings are. So, yeah. Come over. I think I've got the perfect one. Victoria Newman is one classy, refined lady."

Billy doesn't know how Henry is at weddings.

But he does know Henry Rosenberg at his drunken best: he's wasted after a shot and a half of tequila and becomes one of those ramblings emotional drunks that cry and laughs in the same breath. He remembers Henry getting wasted in Miami with him one night, You know what, man. I love you, 'kay? I, Henry Carl Rosenberg, love you, William Foster Abbott, in that platonic bromancey, Non-Homosexual kinda way 'cause I'm not gay or anything. Yes, I'm as straight as path from this table to the waiter with the tequila. Speaking of which, hey! Yeah, you – yup, with the lop-sided nostrils, stop dancing with the tequila and gimmie more. It is my – my American right to get wasted. Right? Damn, I love this country!

It's Billy who calls his friend a cab before he starts singing a drunken version of God Bless America.

But even drunk, Henry is one of those really loyal people; he's the definition of loyal. And has this really colourful way of calling Billy out by being funny, truthful, socially awkward and offensive all at once. That's why it's a shock when Henry happens to land in GC after living in Milwaukee for some time after leaving Boston and his family behind.

"Thanks, man. You get double ad space in Restless Style for this. I owe you. See you in fifteen?"

"Help me hone my Jedi skills?"

"No."

Henry sounds affronted but it's all in jest, "Right," he sighs, over the phone. "You're too smooth to help. The light saber is green. Green's your favourite colour."

"Affairs of the heart over the green light saber any day."

Henry sighs, and then chuckles, "Look who's got it bad," and then the jeweler agrees, "Sure, fifteen minutes and double ad space to pimp out the shop sounds good."

Billy Abbott still isn't a conventional guy, and he'll never be but he's going to do the formal thing and ask Victoria to marry him again because a) he's not drunk with sand between his toes and blue eyes glassy and b) the second time is the charm and it'll stick this time.

World [wurld] — everything that exists; the universe.

She's a grown woman and everything she does is her prerogative.

If only, Victoria weren't so emotionally shackled to her father.

For so long, Victoria Newman's world revolves around business and the thrill of closing deals, new ad campaigns that put the competition to shame. From the moment she crosses into adulthood, she finds her world revolved around Newman Enterprises. She enjoys the thrill of mergers and sometimes and being ruthless when it's absolutely necessary. After all, she and Nick take a page take a page out of the Victor Newman Manual of Life (read: Alternatively titled My Way Or The Highway, You Got That?) and get it drilled into their heads that the end always justifies the means.

In a world of business suits, stocks and shareholders, Victoria learns that the benefits always will outweigh the costs.

This is what Victoria's corporate world (because it's the only constant in her life) is essentially comprised of: an unsaid code that says it's the status quo to go for the jugular – the carnage falls and explodes but it's only part of the job – and be a little Machiavellian than usual.

She shouldn't be surprised with father, acting like the hardened general with all the Yes Men money can buy. Nobody ever says no to Victor Newman – no, not even his children are exempt.

Well, this soldier is going AWOL.

Maybe Victoria really stop seeking what is unattainable in her world – Victor Newman's approval.

Victoria walks into her father's office with a manila envelope in her grasp, the portrait still over the mantle.

(She knows the entire building inside and out. It's in her blood and she can't run away too far.)

Her father sits his desk, high and mighty because Victor Newman can do no wrong and judges her on Japan and how that useless Billy Abbott follows her to Japan for some hidden ulterior motive Obviously, Billy must tip Ashley and Tucker off because well, he's an Abbott and Billy is just that underhanded and sneaky (oh, so much sarcasm for one so proper and one so well-bred).

As always, the criticism and judgment are thrown at Victoria because she can absorb them.

"I did Japan for you, Dad. I did your dirty work as always and didn't question it twice," she counters, folding her arms. "I handed the antique gun over to secure Beauty of Nature like you asked me to and that was the end of it."

"Tucker McCall has been sniffing around because you couldn't be discrete."

He's using that voice – the one that is calm before the big storm, before he stops being just her dad and starts being the All Powerful Victor Newman.

Victoria tries to explain, "It was in a private room—"

"—and that punk Billy Abbott followed you to Japan. He could have taken company information to his sister, who happens to be the CEO of Jabot!" he thunders, and Victoria is just breathing in and breathing out. She can do this. You're allowed to stand up to dear ol' Dad and fight back, y'know. Tell him to go kick rocks, baby, Billy's voice says somewhere in the crevices of her head.

"Ashley's the mother of your daughter," Victoria shoots right back, "and I know business because I am my father's daughter," she inhales, sharply partly because her adrenaline is totally all over the place no matter how controlled Victoria seems on the outside, she's getting really angry. "In regards to Billy, you don't have any say over that. I'm a grown woman. You've controlled every aspect of my life for so long and I won't have it anymore!"

Victor raises an eyebrow and as calmly as possible (dear god, he cuts her) says, "Hmm – you're a grown woman with a decimated marriage, lost custody of your child and no direction, running around like a child! Everything I have done, is because I love you. Open your eyes, girl!"

How dare him.

"No!" she screams, tears brimming in her eyes. Reed always brings up her emotions because her love for her child is just that great and the pain over JT getting full custody is still so fresh, the scars on her heart. Pointing a slender accusatory finger at her own father, Victoria just snaps, "No, don't you throw Reed into this! You decided to interfere and made me lose my only child! I lost custody of your grandson because of you! And yeah," she blinks the tears back, eyes steely, "my life may not have a clear path right now but I'm happy and freer than ever and I know that soon enough, you won't be in it!"

She's breathing heavily, trying to bring her racing heartbeat and pumping adrenaline back to normal.

"You compose yourself," and her father's eyes are like a shark, "and you choose where your loyalties lie right now. Your actions are ripping this family apart, Victoria."

"Are you seriously asking me to choose between you and Billy?"

"That is exactly what I'm asking you to do."

Victoria merely tosses the manila envelope on the mahogany desk, "That," she explains, icily, "is my formal resignation letter from Newman. You asked me to choose," she pauses, those three words like hot coals, burning the tip of her tongue and about to said and never taken back. She's sure. "So, I choose Billy."

She loves her family (read: Mom, Nick, Abby, her nieces, Faith and Summer, and all grown up nephew, Noah. And somewhere way deep down Victoria can't erase her father, either – damnit) but Victoria is allowed to be happy so she will.

"Is that right?"

"Yes," she grabs her purse, the box containing essentially her life at this company with her name on it, and Victoria leaves her father's office with a parting shot. "Besides, I'm not the one destroying the family, Dad," her voice goes into a slight whisper, more to herself to him. She raises her eyes to her father once more, "You do that perfectly all on your own."

The black phone rings, slicing through a seemingly long pause but the tension still thick ten times over.

"Yes. Mhm. I will take care of it. Thank you, Connie," Victor puts the receiver down and behaves as if that manila envelope doesn't exist. Her own father doesn't' even look at her and well, Victoria needs to stop being surprised. It's expected now. "Show yourself out. I have a matter to tend to."

(He doesn't even care so why the hell should she even try?)

"Gladly."

In a perfect world, there is room for the man who has been in her orbit from day one and the man who unexpectedly shoves his way through her world and then everybody can co-exist.

She can see whoever she wants, and do whatever she desires and not feel like Victoria is cutting the threads of family loyalty.

Oh, who is she kidding?

There is no perfect world, perfectionist that she is. Dad slings ultimatums in her face and Victoria can't deal. So what if Billy Abbott isn't as annoying and irritating as he seems? And what if she just happens to enjoy his company more and more?

This is one thing Dad can't control and hey, maybe Billy's right – Victoria is in charge and in control of her world and who's allowed in it.

Victoria chooses to have Billy in her world.

The End.

Wait [weyt] — to remain inactive or in a state of repose, as until something expected happens.

Waiting is agony for Victoria.

Usually, it has something to do with the intricacies of business and art – a merger that's a little too long, a product that takes a little too much time for development and the anticipation makes her overly anxious. When there's twenty-four hours in a day, can you really blame her?

Maybe twenty-four hours in a day is way too long for one day. It's all about living in the now and the present. Yeah, that's Victoria's new philosophy and she's sticking to it.

Right now, however, Victoria is pacing her new house with the boxes still unpacked, the pregnancy tests upstairs forgotten and the house too quiet, thoughts in her head become loud and rampant. Call it impatience, a side effect of life-long privilege or anxiety from maybe possibly hormones but Victoria just wants to stop waiting for Billy to come home.

(She needs him.)

It's been twenty-minutes since she let Reed go and Victoria is about to pace the same path for the nineteenth time (yeah, she's counting – just because she's impulsive now, doesn't mean she can't be meticulous) when the front door opens and Billy finally ambles in.

"Hi."

She's mad at him. Really, really mad and Billy doesn't blame her for that.

"You smell like a brewery. And now, I'm the kind of woman who says words like brewery."

He smells like the early hours of New Year's Day.

"I'm sorry," Billy replies. He clears his throat. "It's a really bad habit. And I shouldn't have bailed like that."

Victoria slightly hardens, "No, you shouldn't have. Did you come to get your things –"

Billy grabs her shoulders gently, and cuts her off.

"No, no," Billy pauses, and sighs. "Just listen, okay? I'm not going anywhere."

She just buys that pregnancy test as a precaution. Honestly, Victoria is building up the courage to tell him. She doesn't means for Billy to find out while looking for the digital camera to capture their new home. Her stomach twists around and she gets her out of bed in the morning, just to retch and vomit. Her usually tough skin is starting to get hormonal chinks in it and sometimes, Victoria starts to crave the oddest food combinations when Logic tells her that her taste buds can't handle it.

Who knows? It may be a bug or something.

"Why'd you run away?"

"Old habits are kinda hard to break," he says, taking her hand in his, brushing her knuckles against his lips gently. "I realized, though, that I want to be with you. I want that life with you – the one with the two point five kids, the white picket fence with maybe, a dog. I'm ready. I know I am."

She looks gazes with him, staring up into those blue eyes of his.

How can Victoria possibly hate him now?

"I want to be with you, too."

"Look, I got you pregnant possibly, and really, I'd still want to be with you even though there was no baby. I've done a lot of stupid things. But I'm smart enough to know that this is the life I want," Billy says, with all sincerity and honesty. She can't even say anything, and her distaste melts away. How can she possibly have any negative feelings when the man she loves (yes, it's actually come to that) bears his soul to her? "There's nothing funny about a guy maybe, possibly getting his girl pregnant. You're my girl and any child of yours would be amazing."

Victoria tries to open her mouth but nothing comes out and oh, God, she knows what happens next.

He's starting to go down on one knee and that beautiful ring is glinting up at her.

"So," he says, still on one knee, "Victoria, will you do me the honour of becoming of my wife?"

(Say something, say anything, say everything.)

"Uh, you're killing me here."

It's like everything around her freezes, and her eyes are welling up with tears like the feeling of a marriage proposal is brand new.

Billy starts to get up, and Victoria makes sure he's stays down (she's going to do this right).

"No, no – stay down. This is just so unexpected," she sniffles, and hastily wipes the tears away even though they stick to her cheeks and sort of makes her make-up run. Taking a deep breath, she holds out her hand and smiles while Billy slides the ring on her finger and it fits perfectly. Her reply comes out in a whisper, grinning back at him from ear-to ear, "Yes – yes, I'll marry you."

Billy gets up, pressing his lips against hers to seal the deal.

"You really know how to make a guy wait, don't you?"

"Sorry," Victoria murmurs between kisses, still smiling from ear-to-ear. "Bad habit of mine."

Here's something Victoria's completely overjoyed to also find out after getting engaged: the pregnancy is positive and she's going to be a mommy again.

This wait to begin her life as Mrs. William Abbott is over.

(She can't wait.)

Fever [fee-ver] — an abnormal condition of the body, characterized by undue rise in temperature, quickening of the pulse, and disturbance of various body functions.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Reed?"

"Are you and Billy friends?"

Victoria feels her lips tug upwards without her knowledge. Sure, maybe. Even after Jamaica, they're friends – friends that have sex, and laugh, talk with witty and flirtatious banter and yeah, she's taking careful baby steps towards crossing those really wide Abbott-Newman Battle Lines.

(because in retrospect, the carnage is too much and it's starting to get too tedious to care.)

"Yeah," she answers, smiling at her son across the table at Crimson Lights. "Something like that."

Reed smiles back, "Okay," and then adds as an afterthought in his mind. "I like Billy – he's nice."

Victoria chuckles to herself, finding the double meaning in what her articulate, smart little boy tells her.

(She likes Billy too.)

The first time, Victoria comes into contact with anything remotely to do with a fever, she fakes it.

The meeting at Newman Enterprises can wait and Billy puts Restless Style on hold so they could be together. Dad doesn't control her anymore. He can't control her anymore and a little more every day, Victoria is not worrying about what Victor will say underneath a disapproving glance.

The second time, Victoria Newman actually has a fever with a slight cough and spends her day, making herself cups and cups of chamomile tea to ease her sore throat while wrapped in her favourite pink-magenta blanket. Her long hair is in a messy bun, wisps of hair deciding to break free (like she's trying to – see the symbolism?) by framing her face.

She's not wearing any make-up and all dressed up like a Newman always is, but her favourite jammies and her gray tabby cat slippers.

At least, Abby is nice enough to bring a bouquet of daisies by.

And a little bit of Titanic can't hurt.

Rose, you're so stupid! Why would you do that, huh? God, I love you so much, Jack says, and pulls her close to himself, pressing his lips close against her wet hair.

Rose merely smiles, looking up into Jack's eyes, You jump, I jump – right?

Here's something you should know: Pride & Prejudice is one of her favourite books as a little girl because of Austen's imagery and how strong somebody like Elizabeth Bennett is. As she gets older, she also realizes that history and art are nearly tied in her heart.

Victoria finds herself fascinated with nineteenth century historical art whenever she's thrust into a whole world when a woman goes against the grain of an overly male English society.

She gets to Jack and Rose's final scene as Jack freezes to death, fingers still curled like Rose's hand will be attached to his forever and always. Grabbing a tissue, Victoria blows her nose and sniffles. It's the umpteenth time watching this movie and still, it makes her cry.

The phone rings and she hits pause.

"Hello."

"Hello, Ms. Newman," Ronald, one of the security guards at the Ranch, says over the phone receiver. "Billy Abbott is here to see you."

Victoria sighs, audibly, trying to get rid of the headache about to settle around her temple.

"Thank you. Send him in."

"Hi."

"Abby told me you were sick," Billy explains, looking her over as Victoria yawns, slightly. He grins and brandishes a light brown paper bag with handles. "So, I come bearing soup."

That's oddly sweet of him – in between Mom checking in, Reed drawing little get well soon, Mommy pictures with multicoloured crayons and Dad calling, it's kind of nice. She takes the bag from him, hand lightly brushing and there's that electric feeling again. She uses her free hand to brush the tendrils of her brown hair from her face.

"Wait, you made this?"

He shrugs, "Don't sound that surprised. I'm pretty decent in the kitchen, and I got this chicken noodle soup recipe from Traci. Dad worked all the time but when we were kids and we got sick, he used to make this for us. It always did the trick. Abbott family secret recipe," and then Billy adds, as genuine as Victoria has ever seen him. "I'm gonna head over to Katherine's because if I don't, I have one angry toddler on my hands."

She smiles, knowingly, "Delia?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Victoria replies, and is feeling gratitude towards him for more than just the soup. "Well, I really appreciate this. It was…oddly sweet of you so thank you."

"It's fine," he replies and his blue eyes glint whenever he's about to be a smart-mouth. At the beginning, it's annoying and now, it's endearing to her. "Feel better, Vicki."

Here's a crazy little hypothesis: maybe Billy is her twenty-first century Mr. Darcy as she tries to do something right and be her own Elizabeth Bennett.

And maybe they're just like Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater. Or they can be.

Then again, it's a ridiculous hypothesis.

(Hey, Victoria's sick. Blame it on the chamomile.)

Hope [hohp] — the feeling that what is wanted can had or the events will turn out for the best.

When Victoria is younger and just starting out in the mailroom of Newman Enterprises, she has aspirations of making her father proud held tightly in her heart and entrepreneurial stars in her eyes. She and her brother are fresh from their fancy European boarding schools with a clear, mental tablet.

Of course, because Victor drill into her and Nicholas' heads every business principle in his arsenal as they learn everything on Daddy's knee. With her youth and naïveté, Victoria wants to make Dad proud – even more proud when she strikes out on her own.

She used to think that Dad can go do no wrong and he will always love, protect her and shield Victoria for all of the bad in the world.

(It's true, way back when.)

It seems foolish to hope for glimpses of all too fragmented past now.

Victoria gazes at Abby on the days they meet with Vance to prepare for one more mediation (it'll be the end soon) or more arbitration (sweet vindication and Beauty of Nature within her grasp).

It's a battle for freedom and an even bigger war on independence.

Abby has that starry-eyed, hopeful look in her face and that slightly, optimistic tone in her voice when the name Victor Newman happens to drop or slip out.

It hangs in the air, thick and like an omnipresent shadow.

How Victoria wishes things are different (just for Abby's sake, of course).

It's too late now.

Victoria still miscarries her child with Billy – it will always be her father's fault for robbing her of what could be – and learns that her father will never be accountable for his actions.

Here's something everyone in Victor's Inner Circle already knows one way or the other: accountability is a foreign term in his vocabulary because money, power and influence are his universal Band-Aids (even to the cuts and wounds too deep to cover up).

She looks into her father's eyes (she has her mother's) and she can't tell him why she even agrees to meet him at the Club.

"Of all my children, I'd always hoped it would be you who would be at my side at Newman," Victor says and then sighs deeply. "My first-born."

Victoria can decipher her father effortlessly in the past – when they are closer. It's sweet of him to want to make peace and end the insanity.

Then again, she doesn't join Abby because of the money.

It's about The Principle of the Thing.

She's tasted freedom, seen life beyond the walls of Newman Enterprises and discovers her free-spiritedness with an untapped sense of humour right behind. Victoria re-discovers art as well, her first passion. She realizes how fun it is to eat ice-cream straight out of the mini-carton. She likes to rest against Billy in their home on the nights there's absolutely nothing to do. Victoria watches old black and white movies while his steady breathing soothes her and his steady heartbeat becomes her lullaby.

Her need to continue this new, post Victor Newman-free life fuels this lawsuit.

(The monetary aspect is just the tip of the iceberg about to sink the relationship between father and daughter.)

Wishing is too late and Victoria is too smart to hope for what can't be.

There's no going back.

Promise [prom-is] — a declaration that something will or will not be done; an express assurance on which assurance is to be based.

One day, Katherine and Murphy are okay and in love.

And then the next day, they still are in love, yet Murphy is far from okay.

Victoria watches Katherine through the little window in the door as she sits diligently at her husband's bedside. She doesn't want to intrude – sure, Katherine has been there since her childhood and Murphy is an all-around good guy and doesn't deserve this – but still, it's unnerving.

(Like taking a glimpse into a really bad future without the actual time machine.)

When Victoria marries Billy, she promises to be with him forever and a day as long as he keeps talking in fifties lingo even now and then, and puts Braille Cream in his hair just like Jim. And he promises that if she keeps kicking his butt at Donkey King and beer pong, he's hers for life. That should be enough – well, it is.

It's more than enough but that's not point.

The hospital freaks her out, gives her anxiety and makes her heart beat loudly, blood rushing in Victoria's ears so fast she can't catch up. She walks in and instantly remembers all too clean smell everything too pristine and organized for her liking (and Victoria is the Undisputed Queen of Order and Meticulousness). People come here sick with them holding on to life as it's the fragile, transparent thread of a spider web and it will be over if it breaks.

Facts say every seven seconds, someone dies.

And who's to say that death doesn't walk in the painfully white halls of Genoa City Memorial right now?

(Forgive her. The morbidity is unintentional—it's the glaring truth but…you know. Things happen.)

"Hey."

"Hi. Where were you?"

"Just had to walk. Clear my head and think about things. If I waited any more, I'd lose it and it's not like Katherine is going to leave Murphy's side any time soon," Billy observes, wistfully. "To be trapped in your own body like that."

Victoria's reply barely comes out as a whisper. "Yeah. It's awful."

Another beat passes.

She turns away from the window in the door, and gazes at her husband through worried eyes. She can't bear it if something ever happens to him. Victoria knows she's strong and can bend against the grain but not with this. Never this.

"Promise me something?"

Billy nods, "Okay."

"Promise me you won't die, alright?"

He doesn't talk.

Simply, he takes her head gently in his hands, silently assuring her that they'll be okay. His fingers are slightly tangled in her dark brown hair like when he's about to give her one of those kisses that are so electric, the current travels down all the way to her toes.

Billy reaches up and plants his lips firmly on her forehead.

(That's the best kind of promise to her.)

She doesn't talk either.

Victoria just sighs in relief and allows him to hold her, her arms around Billy's neck while his are strong around her waist (don't let me go, love) securely.

She inhales lightly against his shoulder, inhaling the scent of Billy's musk and barely whispers I love you against the material of his suit jacket.

Here's something that happens without words because words aren't necessary here: Victoria promises never to die and leave him alone, either.

Strength [strength] — the quality or state of being strong; bodily or muscular power; vigor.

As that cursor blinks at him in the dead of the night, and that grand list of everything rotten thing Victor does to lose the Father of the Year Award is persistently in his line of view, that's when Billy Abbott is painfully aware that taking the high road isn't one of his moral strengths.

(And never really is, to begin with. Hey, at least he gets brownie points for honesty.)

Billy can easily do it.

He can effortlessly use Restless Style as a linguistic chainsaw and use blinding truth to basically rip Dear Old Father-in-Law to shreds.

After all, the pen is mightier than the sword and that's justification enough.

Even Doomsday has his weakness.

Victor Newman is his Doomsday – that's why Billy is actually Superman in disguise and one of the many factors as to why he cannot stand that guy.

Don't tell anyone but Clark Kent totally steals his bit. Shhh.

At approximately two oh six in the morning, Lucy's crying shatters his thought process and he heads upstairs to the nursery a door down from the master bedroom, letting Victoria sleep.

She's going toe to toe with her own father so she'll need all the sleep she can get.

"Daddy's here, Lucy," Billy says, when he picks her up. He's really getting the hang on the whole newborn thing and every day, he loves this little girl a little more. She's the most amazing, perfect, beautiful baby in the world. He smiles softly. "Alright. Let's go get you a bottle and a diaper change. Sound good?"

Lucy coos in response like she actually understands him.

"You're a night owl just like me, aren't you?" he muses and Lucy smiles a smile at him – the one that makes his heart like goo and the one that possibly says, I trust you, Daddy.

(He's such a girl but still, Billy is one lucky son of a bitch.)

Planting a gentle kiss on her head, (like the first time they meet under the weight of Primrose and two million dollars planted squarely on his broad shoulders) Billy positions Lucy on his shoulder with his hand protectively supporting her head when he quietly pads out of the nursery and downstairs.

Here's the next thing Billy loves about Lucy: the way she sometimes stares up at him with wide, innocent eyes and grips his finger in a strong, vice-like grip and doesn't let go.

Still twenty minutes later, Lucy falls asleep fed and freshly changed in his arms.

He stares down at her face – she's so content, doesn't know what the hell is swirling around her and doesn't experience any bad in the world. Well, Billy vows to protect Cordelia and Lucy from everything and anything that'll hurt them.

The computer backlight still glares at him, the list of Victor's misdeeds still in his face and that damn cursor still blinking at him because inspiration is a slow trickle tonight.

Billy thinks of parenting and all the things that Victor does (he's gonna be a good boy, drink coffee while finishing this editorial and keep his potty mouth clean) and fatherhood. What Victoria's list really is a road map titled, How to Have Children and Alienate Them, which is the sequel to My Way or The Highway (You Got That?). Essentially, everything Victor does is a crash course in the no-nos of parenting.

He thinks of Dad, and how it is when he's a kid – back to when it's just him and Dad in New York. John never blurs the lines of business and family together to teach them a lesson or dangles ultimatums and lawsuits, expecting complete submission in return.

Billy doesn't have his father on this pedestal because he's human and chock full of flaws and mistakes but for Billy, he's fucked up so many times in his life and all Dad ever does is love him – love him to the point of undeserving it because Billy has screw-up tattooed with invisible ink. But John underneath a disapproving tone and a glance of disdain is a father who just loves him for him. Dad never condemns him, and never judges him.

All John ever does is love him, Jack, Ashley and Traci and if he can be half the father to his kids as his father is while he's alive, then Billy will take it.

Billy likes to think of himself as being Superman because well, what man can honestly say they have Superman boxer shorts?

This life with Victoria and his daughters is his Kryptonite in the best kind of way.

Eighteen and half minutes later, Billy places Lucy down in the playpen gently, little chest heaving with little breath she takes, tiny fingers curling and uncurling –

— and then inspiration hits him.

It hits Billy and as the girls sleep, and he pounds away at the keyboard – thoughts morphing into sentences and just pouring out from his head to heart out of his fingertips to the screen.

(Because it's the whole truth and nothing but.)

Dad would be proud of him, Billy thinks off-handedly being sleep-deprived and all, and that's what gives him the strength to take the higher ground to use his Journalistic Powers for good instead of evil this time.

Ring [ring] — a typically circular band of metal or other durable material, especially one of gold or other precious metal, often set with gems, for wearing on the finger as an ornament, a token of betrothal or marriage, etc.

"Remember, when I said we just didn't have time to get rings for the ceremony?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I just had an idea."

"Last time you said that Snake keeled over and left your father's name on my back."

"Yeah, but your tattoo healed and I love it."

"I like the view of yours as well. Especially, when you're naked."

"And as much as I love you clothed and naked alike, this is serious. We're getting married tomorrow, so I just thought of an idea: let's get the rings tattooed on. They'll last as long as our marriage. They'll last forever."

"Hmm. Okay, but I can handle needles. The question is: do you need me to hold your hand again?"

"I can handle needles. But you're handling my hand anyway."

"I'd love to, Mrs. Abbott."

"Yeah. For real this time."

"Damn straight."

And then they have alone time.

Still, it's the best alone time ever because it's so much more than a fling now. It's something like falling in love and she writes forever&always on the inside of his eyelids when Billy makes her see stars, Victoria's naked body fitting perfectly on top of his.

(The End.)

He needs a best man fast. Like in the next four hours fast.

Or he could get two just to be double sure or something.

The large triple shot espresso makes Billy jittery and maybe, he should just stop drinking it. Billy sighs audibly, whispering a damn underneath his breath.

"You've reached Rafe. I'm not available at the moment which is unfortunate but leave me a message and I'll call you back." beep.

"Man, it's Billy. And I kinda need you. Call me back when you're done saving people from the reality of jail. It's important. Bye."

He hangs up and lightly tosses the phone against the surface of the table at Crimson Lights. Today is totally not his day. Billy needs some groomsmen quick and is really about to let the Big Guy Upstairs have it. Then like clockwork, Phillip, walks in right past him to order at the counter. Phillip is Billy's half-brother and maybe Mom would like it if they get to hang out and remotely act like brothers even if it's for one moment in time; just for one day. Maybe one day can turn into more. They don't even know each other that well; hell, Billy doesn't know him at all.

In retrospect, the fact that he pretends to be dead and then has Cane play him leaves a bitter taste in Billy's mouth ("If you hurt my mother again, I'll kill you, understand?") but whatever, he's getting desperate.

Billy stands up, and walks over to the half-brother he virtually doesn't know.

"Phillip."

"Oh – hey Billy," Phillip answers, a cross of a smile and a stunned expression on his features. "How's it going?"

"Good. Uh, actually great," Billy pauses and explains, "I'm getting married in a few hours and I know this is odd coming from me, but I need a favour from you. If you don't want to, trust me, I won't hold it against you."

Phillip replies, with a light shrug, green tea in hand, "I'd be happy to help."

"Want to be a groomsman for my wedding?"

Billy braces himself for the polite rebuff (because Phillip is nice like that and nobody will ever let him live Jamaica down) and is rewarded by a smile and a handshake.

"I'd be honoured, Billy."

"Thanks. Be at my house in a couple hours."

"Sure."

Okay, Phillip is officially on his mental list of Alright People while Billy crosses another item of his mental Wedding List.

"Hello?"

"Rafe Torres, you my friend, are heading towards my shit list. Where've you been all day?"

"I'm sorry," Rafe apologizes and sighs heavily, "I'm just up to my eyeballs in legal stuff and just got out a meeting. I was supposed to meet Owen for something but he wasn't available."

Oh, yes – Owen Pomerantz (read: Douchebag Pomerass), the District Attorney that hates Newmans and Abbotts all the same. It's one of the few times where the families aren't doing battle and, dare he say it, actually team up. When the Newman and the Abbott families band together, the urges to strangle each other aren't as present.

Billy rolls his eyes, and changes the subject as he walks out of Crimson Lights towards his car.

"Put the legal stuff down and be my best man today. I'm getting married. I need you to be my best man and hey," Billy suggests, sticking his car key in the ignition, "you can even bring a date along. What about Tyler?"

"Tyler and I are done."

"Ouch. Tough break – well, there's a full bar after the ceremony so you can get shit-faced and forget about Tyler if you have to."

"Billy — "

That's the tone of disdain. He knows it so well. But okay, fine – it's in bad taste. In the Billy Abbott Philosophical Manual it says, when dealing with hard shit that's just too tedious, a) crack a joke b) drink until everything is awesome and everyone is a buddy and sober strangers turned drunken friend or c) do both. Rafe should give it a read when it's tangible and not just in his head.

"Sorry. Bad joke. But seriously, I'd really like it if you could be my best man."

"Yeah," the lawyer agrees on the other end, "I'd be more than honoured to stand for you. I guess, you'd have to give me Victoria's ring to hold on to."

Billy clears his throat because well, there is no ring and it's not like the wedding is going to traditional anyway. A fifties style wedding on the lawn of their home is perfect.

"There is no ring exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, there's no ring because it was an instant decision and there was no time. So, we decided on getting the rings tattooed on."

Rafe chuckles, knowingly.

"Okay, no ring. Well, that lessens my job but yeah, I wouldn't miss it. I'm there."

"You're awesome. Next time, drinks on me."

"Oh, I'll hold you to it."

Rafe is never on Billy's Shit List to begin with.

(He's too good of a friend for that.)

Here's clear evidence that says Victoria knows him that well: honestly, there isn't going to be any actual wedding band to begin with. His wife-to-be (holy shit, it's not a dream) is just so telepathic that she beats Billy to the punch with that Tattooed Wedding Band idea.

See how in sync and epic they are?

Lock [lok] — a device for securing a door, gate, lid, drawer, or the like in position when closed; consisting of a bolt or system of bolts propelled and withdrawn by a mechanism operated by a key, dial, etc.

He hates this place.

Billy hates the Genoa City Police Department but his hate for his father-in-law trumps everything. Billy barely manages to make Victoria his wife by the skin of his teeth.

It's supposed to be a good day (no one's throwing grains of rice at them and someone's going to have Slutty Wedding Non-Romantic Sex, it's Genoa City) and then it's a flurry of Department of Justice agents coming to take her away because of what goes down in Japan, Judge Anderson calling them husband and wife in one hurried breath before Victoria and their baby ("Hey, man – be careful, she's pregnant!") go in the back of a cop car and is driven away.

All he has to do is run – just run after the cop car fast enough and hard as his white boutonnière is a smudge in his peripheral vision, slightly hanging off his light blue lapel.

Billy can see the fear in his wife's eyes from the back window and it only fuels the fire in his.

"Billy!" he hears Jill's voice ring out and yell above the rest. All he has to do is run.

And then he can't run anymore.

"Damn you, Victor."

Fuck, Billy doesn't run enough.

Still, Billy thinks Vickie is the most beautiful bride in lock up.

It's a wonderful place to be after getting married.

(That's sarcasm by the way.)

The walls are a depressing – almost Suicide-Inducing – shade of grey, the guards look at them through the little window in the door like it's thin ice and they might just fall through. Well, Billy might as well fall with her. Victoria sighs, quietly, trying to rationalize how the day goes from a quick wedding that's still equally beautiful to a scene straight out of COPS.

Oh, Billy remembers being here when he's one of the suspects of committing the Murder That Was Supposed to Be (refer to: The Great Abbott-Newman Cabin Beatdown) but never really happens. And when he chooses to be here by choice because he's an American and it's not a crime to use the First Amendment. Actually, it's within his constitutional rights.

And this is where for the very first time, Billy collides with her, in a mess of angry glares, witty and scathing banter and a silent battle of wills.

Now a year later, Victoria's wrists are accessorized with silver handcuffs locked around her delicate wrists and still a beautiful, pure white wedding dress.

Billy wants to put the reception on hold just to go and shoot his father-in-law in the face and kill him.

Or in the chest because CeCe's heart is in the wrong place.

Nothing will make him happier.

She's facing twenty to life for commercial bribery and maybe, in some twisted way, Billy will choose to be in jail again just to be with her while he hypothetically faces a life sentence for murder in the first degree.

Too bad reality shows up in the form of being a father to Delia and puts a halt on that Mission immediately, but still, the anger is ever so present – it's there making the adrenaline race through his system, his heart beating stronger and faster as the blood rushes past his ears and settles in his face. Billy's anger is slow building right beneath the Groom surface, fizzing and crackling. It's hard to be cool, collected and a law-abiding citizen right now.

Victoria gazes at him while tear-brimmed eyes and Billy can rein in his anger a little longer.

Just a little longer, baby.

There's all this talk of arraignment and bail and twenty years to life.

All he wants to do is take his car and do donuts on Victor's Really Big lawn.

Nick leaves the jail, telling Victoria to be strong (like Billy knows she is) and that she'll come out of this mess unscathed. There's no way in hell Billy believes she's going to have their baby from the inside of a jail cell, the metal bars not the only barrier between them.

The guard glances at the newlyweds while opening the door for Nick.

In one discrete move only Billy can see, Nick nods at him and Billy nods back, slightly tightening the grip on his wife's hand.

And then they're all alone.

"You know, I can just murder your father and we'll spend our honeymoon in lock-up together."

Victoria looks at him, sad smile playing up her lips.

"That's not funny."

"I know," Billy admits, and kisses her on the temple and whispers, "You'll get outta this, I promise. You just take care of yourself," and then his hand protectively wanders over to her stomach. It's flat now but he finds that he's excited about ultrasounds, sonograms and everything else Billy doesn't get to do with Delia as a baby, "and our little one."

She's silent and just allows Billy to hold her. He wraps his arms around his wife and holds her for as long as he can before the guard says it's time for her to get to her cell for the night.

Billy realizes their fifties style house will be a little bigger because of the silence and his bed will be a little cold tonight.

She repeats over and over, "My dad doesn't hate me so much that he would let me take the fall for just being obedient to him, would he? He wouldn't let me take the fall for Japan. I committed commercial bribery for him."

His jaw clenches.

"No," Billy answers, and takes an angry sigh. Victor's a Class One Bully and a whole list of swear words that barrage his head, a mile a minute. "In his own twisted way, he loves you. But he'd sell you up the river without a paddle if it meant you didn't marry me."

Victoria's face is streaked with one clear tear and her voice breaks, "My son saw me get arrested. Reed saw Department of Justice agents lead his mother away and—"

"Shhh. Stop it," he whispers. "Reed is crazy about his mother regardless. He won't feel any different."

Billy grips her hand, locking the fingers together and raises it to his lips so he plants a gentle kiss to the back of her hands in his own way of re-assurance.

Here's the hard part: letting Victoria go and hear the distant sound of a jail cell closing when he leaves to go home to an empty, silent house.

(Never mind that Chloe cries into his chest because his nephew's dead.)

Lies [lahys] — a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

There are two things that Billy Abbott knows as truth is his own eyes: lying is wrong and he's damn good at it.

That comes with the territory when he's the best person on the Walnut Grove's debate team. He argues and rebuts and fights even when the statements are legitimate and even more when the arguments are stupid and full of bullshit. The art of lying (yes, it's an art and it takes a special kind of person to master it well) is something, Billy believes because it seems logical in his head, that it is a natural gift, where there are to be no visible chinks in the armour of deceit.

Billy looks at his wife, more hurt than anything.

She fidgets under his gaze, playing with the sheer material of her white robe, tripping over her words and fingering the silver 1950s style ring set on her finger.

While those are the telltale signs of a liar (it takes one to know one, Abbott), Billy would be lying through his teeth if he didn't admit to being sort of impressed with the whole plan.

Victoria talks, runs a hand through her hair, and then there's silence.

So, that's it, huh? Tucker says jump, she says how high and meanwhile rips Jabot – his family's legacy, his father's life work – to shreds.

That's just wonderful.

"So, that was the whole plan from the beginning? Take over Beauty of Nature roll into Jabot and you take over the whole sha-bang. That's it?" Billy deducts, and he's trying not to get angry. He really doesn't want to be mad right now but it's Jabot on the line so forgive him if being demure is fucking difficult.

"If I had told you, you'd be—"

"If you had told me, I'd be what?"

She sighs.

"I'd be what? Say it, c'mon!"

"You would have been really pissed."

No, no, Billy's past pissed.

Pissed when he doesn't get his triple shot espresso in the morning. Pissed is when an article is late and it pushes back the whole production of Restless Style. Pissed is when Chloe parks in his freaking spot just for kicks because she knows it bothers him (read: please refer to the No Espresso in the Morning Clause). Pissed is when people cut him off on the freeway. Pissed is when he misses his daughter more than any father should and can't have her stay over a little longer than Billy wants because of something called Joint Custody.

Those things piss him off and he can deal with it.

But this –

"Yeah, and what else?" he picks and prods, because there's something else. It's not about what Victoria says, but it's always about what she doesn't. "Go on. Finish."

It's always about the unsaid.

"I don't know what you want me to say," she replies, and can't even look him in the eye.

Okay, okay. She doesn't know what to say.

Great, then Billy will be the loving husband and finish her sentences (like always, because love says so).

"I want you to say what you mean – that I couldn't be trusted because I would have gone to Jack behind your back and double-crossed you, right?"

Victoria turns to him, finally. "This is Jabot we're talking about. And you're an Abbott."

So, there it is.

Well, it serves Billy right for thinking they're exempt from the feud and that Victor never really leaves them alone – even after winning the lawsuit and independence from Daddy Dearest.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

"Like you're not an Abbott."

"No!" Victoria says, right away and backtracks, while he can't believe that actually came out of her mouth. He stops being angry because let's face it – he can't stay mad at her for too long – and starts being hurt. "That's not what I meant."

Billy knows exactly what Victoria means, because he knows her so well.

"Then what're you gettin' at here, hmm? That I can't be trusted, is that it? I can't believe you think so little of me," he says, and this is the honest to God truth. He's too tired to even try. "I can't believe you think so little of us."

And then Lucy cries from upstairs.

Billy would be lying to himself if he says he doesn't see the irony and cracks and slight fractures left by the stones in his glass house.

He sighs, with nothing more to say except for, "I'll go get her."

Cold [kohld] — having a relatively low temperature; lacking in passion, enthusiasm, ardor or dispassionate.

Billy is cold and drunk, seeing twothreefour of everything.

Maybe everything is a figment of his very vivid imagination, but snowflakes starts to fall – oh, right; he's not inside at Jimmy's anymore where it's thousand and nine and everybody loves him.

It's a new year and yeah, fine when Billy lets go of whatever buzz he has (be sure to grab his fictional essay titled, The Late John Abbott: Devoted Father, Cherished Friend, Wise Entrepreneur…and Ultimate Buzz Killer – it's an awesome read and still in his head somewhere), he promises to be a good boy and a better person.

He'll try to accept that Mac will carry a child that isn't his just so that Lily can have a kid of her own with Cane. He should see this coming because Mac is the kind of girl who takes in homeless people and stray animals alike.

For once, why can't she just not care about peace and goodwill towards men?

Because Mackenzie Browning doesn't exist if she doesn't have that quality.

Her heart is way too big and too golden and it makes Billy love her and become frustrated at all once.

Billy will be a good person because he can't have Delia grow up and be bitter because he's not there. Sure, he loves Chance but Delia is his baby girl and he'll dance with her when she gets married. He'll be one of those really overprotective fathers – you know, the ones who counts the steps he'll take to the aisle before he kisses Delia on the forehead and slips her hand into her husband's. He'll be the kind of father that will have growing pains over his toddler, growing into a teenager and then going off to college – Billy will deal with it.

Maybe he should appreciate his mother and all her flaws because the woman does give birth to him. Maybe Billy should probably get his head (which hurts like a bitch, by the way) out of his ass and get his shit together.

Oh, and here's something Billy knows for a fact: there's no way in hell Fisher is going to run Restless Style. It'll be a really cold day in hell.

(Because he's living too fast and Billy's about to join the ranks of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe sooner than he thinks – hey, at least he'll die handsome and sort of famous.)

The snowflakes still fall like God's brand of dandruff. The broken snow globe still lay shattered and broken, glass pieces shimmering like glitter in the snow.

Daddy still needs to fix it – make it better – Daddy's really sorry, DeeDee.

It's still cold as hell in January (it's not December anymore, William) but it's even more chilling to glance at his snow-covered car and the tree pole that could be the catalyst to his End.

And that's why, through his head pounding and vision in doubles, Billy believes John coming from The Great Beyond to kick him in the ass is for real.

Glassy and tired blue eyes are fired by really bright headlights and Billy may or may not feel the need to throw up.

Feet covered by high-end boots crunch through snow and he really can't get up.

Then he blinks once, then twice through bleary blue eyes, and there stands Victoria Newman with an expression on her face that is sort of annoyance blended in with exasperation and if Billy squints, there's something like concern in there. But it hurts to squint and it's not worth trying.

"Are you okay?" she questions.

What? Ice Princesses aren't supposed to care.

Instead, she clicks her tongue at him in annoyance and grabs his arm, pulling him up.

"Yeah," Billy mumbles, slurring. He tries grasping at a train of thought that never really leaves the station. "I'm, uh—"

"Come on. Let's get you home."

He allows himself to be led and taken away from that curb to his Humble Trailer only because Billy sees his own demise – where he's supposed to drive drunk and die an instant death by metal – and doesn't like doing it again via hypothermia for the second time.

"God, you're soaking wet. Didn't you already do this in high school?"

(Oh, see – she already knows that.)

It seems like a great conversation starter:

something like, Hey, your Saintly hubby almost killed me when we were kids and it was snowing just like this. Alcohol and cardiac arrest almost does him in. But he's still here. Suck on that, Hellstrom or something along those blurred lines (well, everything's blurry to him at this point).

Instead, it goes something like this:

"You know what? You, Newmans, suck. It's a New Year so I promised Dad I'd be honest."

The brunette sighs, and takes her eyes of the road for a split second to look at him before driving again, making a left handed turn.

"You're so drunk right now, Billy. I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," and then she adds as an afterthought, "Considering what you've turned Restless Style into, good luck with that honesty venture."

Billy chuckles because hey, Pot meet Kettle.

"Yeah, because you – you went away to catch some sand. Of course, Daddy sent you God Knows Where because of legitimate business…stuff. You be honest, sweetheart."

He catches her roll her eyes.

"One, don't call me sweetheart," Victoria says, all proper and cold (like the ice that starts to frost the windows of her car and coats his, sitting all alone in Jimmy's parking lot), "and two, you ruined my life with that article, so kindly shut up."

The only question running through his head (which is still pounding), is why.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why'd you come to Jimmy's? Why not leave me out there?" Billy questions because she pretty much saves him and he's the only one who can see the world spinning and shit getting weird. "You're supposed to leave. Newmans and Abbotts don't team up. The world will implode on itself and we'll all die. And I don't wanna die. There was a wedding and I wasn't there and Delia hated me. Chloe hated me. Mac married Fisher The Chimpmunk. I don't – I don't wanna die."

Somewhere between Victoria's sigh and Billy not wanting his life to end before thousand and ten, his head lolls on the head rest (after all, puking in the snow does make Billy sorta tired) and he falls asleep, or something like that.

"Yes, you're still drunk," Victoria mutters to herself and lightly drums a manicured nail against the smoothness of her steering wheel. "Believe it or not, I'm actually human and one of my New Year's resolutions is to be kinder to animals," Victoria replies, with that persistent undertone of ice. She makes another turn and Billy can kinda make out his trailer in her bright headlights when he opens an eye and at least, tries to wake the hell up. She stops the car and declares like their 'talk' doesn't happen. "We're here."

Here's what the grey matter in Billy's head manages to put together: it's still a biting cold midnight in January and yep, he's gonna puke—but Victoria's hand lightly grasps his wrist to lead him inside and Billy's never felt warmth like that before.

Talk [tawk] — to communicate or exchange ideas, or information by speaking.

Even after Victoria comes back from the hospital (because there's no baby, anymore), she swears she still feels the remnants of her pregnancy. She still feels like her and Billy's baby is still here – by the fourth month, Victoria will unexpectedly feel the slight pressure of a foot or a hand in her ever swelling stomach. In the sixth month, she and Billy will argue over with the found out gender of the baby – let's face it: she wants the surprise and Billy can't wait. They'll probably bicker and banter with the affectionate undertones and love in their eyes.

And then Baby Abbott will be brought into the world, nine months later. Victoria will call Reed and tell him he's a big brother and while Billy tells Delia that she's a big sister.

It'll be perfect.

But the reality is: it's not.

There's no baby, no swollen stomach and no likelihood of a child that has all the best parts of Victoria and all of Billy's lovable quirks.

She doesn't remember too much about her D&C, anyway.

(Here's the thing: Victoria remembers everything, and doesn't tell Billy how damn hollow she feels. Words aren't enough.)

The fourth day after her miscarriage, Billy comes home from Restless Style and Victoria spends the day reading a book so that she doesn't have to answer calls that say how sorry they are, or how divorce isn't too far away, and how much Victoria will heal over with time – that time gets rid of the sting. Well, in Victoria's experience, time doesn't heal anything. All it does is soften the blow and leave scars that only she can see in her mind's eye.

Victoria imagines a thirteen-year-old, Eve, and how strong and beautiful the Daughter That Never Has A Chance could be and how by this time, Eve is a girl on the brink of being a teenager. She ponders the what-ifs, the could-be's and the pressure behind her eyes shows up, the lump in her throat ever persistent.

Billy walks through the door, and plops himself on their couch beside Victoria in slightly, pressing his lips to her dark hair.

"So, how was work?"

He exhales, closing his eyes, "I have my sanity intact, so pretty good," and then Billy opens his eyes, turning his gaze to hers, and Victoria just takes it in, absorbing and smiles at the silent concern in his blue eyes. It's a long way of drawing battle lines, and slaps in smoky dive bars on the edge of town. He pats her knee. "Yours?"

"Hmm – me. What did I do all day?" Victoria repeats, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. She brandishes her book. "I spent the day, drinking chamomile tea and reading something The Da Vinci Code. It's interesting."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Victoria sets her book on the coffee table. "But I need to talk you about something because you've been so sweet to me ever since I lost our baby. You've always been the one to cheer me up and put up with me when I get all sad and depressed," she takes his hand, and automatically their fingers interlace together like they're supposed to.

Billy presses a kiss against her hand. "Baby, you give me way too much credit."

"No, I don't give you enough," Victoria says, and smiles, "so thank you. All I ask though, is you talk to me. The fact is, yes, I miscarried our child but I didn't just loose a baby," she pauses and squeezes his hand, the full gravity of the truth hitting her and washing all over him, ever since that the sharp pain that blossoms in her lower abdomen (so, this is what having a baby ripped away from the inside out feels like). "You did too."

"Yeah," Billy nods, and says to himself, than her, "I did."

"Does it help if I go back to the Ranch and punch your father in the face. My dad did it, and your daddy gave me an unprovoked shiner," Billy explains, as they cuddle and hold each other close for dear life. Or it feels that way – like Billy holds her and Victoria never wants the moment to end. She wants freeze the moment in time and hold it in her mind forever.

"No."

"But," Billy counters, with a joking tone to his voice, "I mean, babe, that's karma. And I'm only finishing what my dad started. That's all."

Victoria laughs, quietly. "No. Punching my dad won't bring our baby back."

"But it'll make me feel really good."

"I have no doubt that it will," Victoria mutters, against her husband's chest. The sound of his heartbeat is strong and steady as it thump-thumps in her ear with clarity; the rise and fall of his chest constant and soothing like her own little lullaby, a silent mantra. With her magenta coloured blanket at her feet and her book about the greatest Florentine artist who ever lives forgotten, she asks, "Billy?"

"Hmm?"

"Could you just hold me some more?" Victoria requests, gaze looking up at her husband. Billy lowers his head to meet her lips in a kiss that is long overdue.

"Yeah, I can do that."

His arms go around her, and Victoria just sighs quietly.

Words don't need to be said because she knows how sad he feels (like everything else: this is also quite mutual and quite real), so she tightens the grip she has around his middle slightly (loveyou) and Billy rests his head on top of hers, the kisses in her hair air light (loveyoumore) and is more reassuring than words can ever say.

Hero [heer-oh] — a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc.

When Victoria is a little girl and the Newman Ranch is home, she remembers her horse.

She remembers the barn, the smell of hay still etched into her brain. Her horse is a dark brown, with a slightly blond mane, a white spot on her torso, and hooves of the same colour. The first time Victoria learns to ride and sit on a horse, she's absolutely terrified. Nine-year-old fingers shake and tremble when Victor helps her grab the leather reins and make them sturdy in her gloved grasp. Of course, she wears a riding helmet because it's a long way down and Victoria is too scared to fall.

Victoria thinks back to climbing onto Clementine's back, swinging one leg at a time over the mare's back with careful trepidation. She remembers her father, climbing up behind her.

Victor smiles, and reassures her that he's right here – that he will always be right here.

Victoria remembers her father, hugging her and looking at her like she really is the apple of his eye, The Great Victor Newman's only Achilles Heel: his family.

There's a time when Victoria thinks her father is her hero – like he would never, ever hurt her.

But now, the air in the arbitration is thick and tense and Victor looks at her from across the table like she's in the thorn in his side.

"You know, when you were a little girl, Victoria, you used to put your father on such a high pedestal," Nikki says, stroking her daughter's hair as Victoria cuddles up against her. She hates this – Nikki hates that her family is in shambles and never thinks that amidst the Newman Family breakdown, that Victor and Victoria would be estranged. It's unfathomable. "You were always his heart. And he would do anything for you. Sweetheart, please don't let this lawsuit destroy that."

Victoria tries not to resist against the sensation of her mother's hands gently stroking her hair. That unlocks the memories of her childhood, the ones before she and Nick are sent away to fancy European boarding schools. The lawsuit isn't about spite or about destroying Newman Enterprises in the process.

It's never about those things although everything involving her father, she comes to realize, becomes collateral damage and casualties in a war that never seems to end.

"Mom," Victoria raises her head, looks into eyes that are just like hers, "if anybody knows the consequences of crossing Dad, it's you. Why defend him after all these years? He does all of this things to the people he claims to love and then isn't accountable."

Nikki sighs, and yes, there's a raw nerve.

(It will always be a thirty-year old raw nerve.)

Victoria and her brother spend the better part of their lives, watching their parents come together and break up like a carousel – sometimes, it's great and sometimes, it's too strenuous to keep track.

Nikki sighs, "I'm not defending him. I don't condone any of this. But we all know what your father is capable of – and how he is when he gets like this," she strokes her daughter's face and wipes away the tears that sticks to her face. And she looks like she hasn't slept in days, tresses falling in disarray. "Baby, despite how your father may feel at the moment, he loves you. He still sees you as his little girl. He loved you the moment he set eyes upon you."

Victoria sniffles, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

If her father loves her so much as her mother says, he won't even think to punish her for marrying Billy put her in jail with the clear knowledge that she's pregnant. He wouldn't try to control her every move right into adulthood. Or he wouldn't punish her in general for once, going against the grain and wanting to take control of her own life.

She's a grown woman, a wife, a mother and for God's sake, she's over twenty-one.

"Mom, when Dad looks at me, she doesn't look at me like a father looks a daughter," she argues, anger, sadness and frustration all melded together in her tone. "He looks at me like a disgruntled employee that told him to go to hell! He punished me for marrying Billy and," she sobs, remembering her argument with her father at Restless Style and the crushing, sharp abdominal pain that occurs after, searing and giving Victoria the feeling of being sliced by a knife, "caused me so much stress – which triggered my miscarriage. If he hadn't been harassing me, I'd still be pregnant."

"I understand that a woman can never get over a miscarriage," Nikki replies, recalling the loss of her son right after birth and the loss of another baby because of that fall down the stairs. It's still so vivid and makes Nikki's skin crawl. Deep down, Nikki still blames Victor, yet the essence love she has him erases most of the resentment. She kisses her daughter's head. "I know – it hurts. But it slowly gets easier. How is Billy handling losing the baby?"

Victoria exhales, deeply, fiddling with the ring on her finger.

She gazes at her mother through worried eyes.

"I know it hurts him, and I wish he'd tell me so. He's trying to be strong for the both of us but he's not superhuman. Billy's been so sweet and kind to me, Mom," Victoria explains to her mother sincerely. "I don't know how I would have been able to cope without him."

"That's good, sweetheart," Nikki whispers, pulls her daughter in and hugs her close. "I love you, baby."

"I love you, Mom." Victoria replies, against her mother's shoulder and hugs back tightly.

Nikki's a thousand percent sure (it's something that's there and glaringly obvious, she sees it at the wedding), Billy really does have nothing but good intentions when he comes to her daughter.

She appreciates it because what else could a mother ask for?

Victoria has nothing to say, but she kisses her husband when he comes from Restless Style – lingering and hard in the middle of their Father Knows Best living room because she loves him and loves that he's so protective of her.

Billy holds her by the waist, as her arms around his neck like they know what to do.

"Hmm," he murmurs, against her lips. Billy smirks, with equal surprise and equal amusement – not that he's complaining because Victoria can kiss him like that any time. Preferably right now, Billy thinks, pulling her in to tighten his grip around her waist and the small of her back. "I must have done something to get a kiss like that. Please remind me."

Victoria grins and kisses him again before pulling away.

"That was my way of thanking you. I haven't gotten over my miscarriage, but you've softened the blow. I love how concerned and protective you are of me. I love you for that, Billy. You're my hero."

"Vickie, you're worth it, and besides," Billy suggests, running a hand over the small of her back. Still, it sends a comfortable chill up Victoria's back and makes her feel so electrified that the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand at attention. Then the warm tingle that never really leaves reappears, "we could keep trying. And trying until you get pregnant again."

She glances at her husband, feeling playful for the first time in weeks.

"Race you."

"You're on, Sweet Cheeks."

So, Victoria runs upstairs, laughing and giggling as Billy catches up to her and picks her up effortlessly, using two steps at a time.

Victoria pushes the Victor Newman related drama and the impeding lawsuit out of her head.

(She can't help but hope Billy is wearing his Superman boxers – yeah, he is.)

Ice [ahys] — the solid form of water, produced by freezing.

To her father, she's simply known as sweetheart and he's the strongest, most resilient man she knows. Her mother is too affectionate to really be formal so Nikki alternates between calling her baby and giving her hugs with hot cocoa and talk into the wee hours of the night.

To Nick, she's the big sister and as his own little quirk, Victoria smiles and nudges his broad shoulder with jovial, light sibling rivalry when he give her that smile of his and calls her Vick. To her nieces and nephew, they call her Aunt Vickie. To the world, she's known all over as Victoria Newman, the heiress daughter of a billionaire tycoon with all of Newman Enterprises set to be placed in her slender, manicured hands.

Suddenly because of Billy Abbott – this man who has turned a reputable magazine like Restless Style into his very own weapon to rip people to shreds and hang dirty laundry out to dry, this man she's probably wired to loathe and despise because she's a Newman and he's an Abbott – Victoria gains a new nickname:

Ice Princess.

She loses the warmth of her happy home with JT and the togetherness of her marriage. What's worse is Reed is starting to pick up on the icy interactions between his parents no matter how much Victoria tries to explain it to her little boy.

Besides, there's an ambience of ice when JT sleeps in the guest room and continues sleeping there, leaving her alone in the bed that's once theirs.

It's not like everybody in the room doesn't know.

It's not like everybody doesn't know what Adam (dear God – that bastard shares the same vein as her and Nick and it's so screwed up) can do. He's a sociopath. He's a pathological liar.

The DNA tests are in Victor's hands, the Abbotts on one side and the Newmans on the other. Nick and Sharon fill out of the middle, and Victor sits in the chair. She glances at Billy from across the imaginary crevice, tearing her gaze away before turning to her brother and patting his arm.

Victor exhales deeply as his eyes scan over the DNA results.

"Faith isn't mine with Ashley. Faith is Sharon's child with Nicholas."

That's the exact moment where the air is sucked of the Abbott living room and the air gets chilly like the Arctic and then decides to shift and plant itself right outside.

It's a blur after that: how stoic her father after this because he loses a child, Sharon and Nick hugging even though they're divorced but never really comes apart (like father, like son; Victoria and Genoa City knows) but of course, she's stupid enough to see anything remotely human in Adam, the Abbotts visibly deflate as Ashley is in a state of disbelief.

"I need to get some air," Billy says, and stalks out, anger bristling. She can see it, and then Victoria hears the sound of the door slamming reverberating throughout the house.

So, Victoria basically gains a niece, and loses a sister.

The Abbott Family gains nothing and Ashley loses everything.

(There's no victory, no resolution – not even close.)

Victoria keeps bumping into Billy and she really wishes that she wouldn't.

The February air hits her in the face as soon as she steps outside on Ashley's doorstep. The tension is just too thick, like a weight that is too heavy to carry. It's humid and muggy, like an unbearably hot day that leaves her unable to breathe. Outside, it's cold and biting and the air crisp but still, there's no happy ending for anyone – Abbott or Newman.

He babbles and for once, and against her better judgment, Victoria listens.

It's still cold and she can see her breath come out in little puffs of air, but still, Victoria's boot-clad feet remains rooted to the ground and makes footprints in the snow.

She's really not an Ice Princess, thank you very much.

(Here's something Victoria thinks is admirable, even though Billy Abbott is an ass: he cares about his family and Ashley losing her baby is taken away from her has an effect on him more than anybody.)

"My sister losing a kid and your dad gains a granddaughter. That's messed up."

"Yeah, it's tragic, really."

"Damn – I swear to God, when I find your weasel of a brother – "

"Ugh. He's my half-brother, and even that's not enough to cut him out of our family tree."

"Well, I'm killing the son of a bitch and smiling all the way through it."

"I can't disagree with you there."

(She really can't because Victoria wants to see Adam's blood splatter as much as everyone else. It's a beautifully sadistic picture that's worth painting.)

Then there's more talk about why people chose their lives to be cautious and just go through the motions of life. And how apparently, The Billy Abbott Way of Life is all about following gut instincts because those are the best ways.

(And maybe, partying until he can't stand, but he's a good boy now, remember?)

Victoria tries not to be fazed by Billy standing so close to her, and staring at her so intensely. She stands close enough to see that his blue eyes has the tiniest flecks of green in them and his sandy brown hair has blond undertones. Every cell in her body screams at her to go the other way like it's always been. Every rational thought is kicking and scratching at her common sense, which seems to frozen in place.

"People just need to follow their gut instinct and stop worrying about things."

"And what's your gut instinct telling you to do?" she questions, before she has the chance to control them and prevent them from coming out.

(It's not how the world ends but rather, how it begins; there's still a bang and a whimper.)

"I'm – I'm still a married woman."

(Victoria still hopes for the ice to melt and the warmth to come back. She still hopes.)

Billy shrugs flippantly, and states what is glaringly obvious and at the forefront of her mind, most days. "Not on paper."

Here's what happens: Billy presses his lips to Victoria's and she finds herself, kissing him back against everything, expect the gut instinct she never knows she has.

It's still a cold day in February, Victoria feels a heat from within her (likemoltenhotlava) powerful enough to melt whatever ice is left in the blink of an eye.

Highway [hahy-wey] — a main road, especially one between towns or cities.

"I've got a surprise for you."

"Really?" Victoria replies, cell phone pressed to her ear. She smiles. "Do tell."

"No, because if I gave you the slightest inkling, it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?"

"Could you give me a clue?"

Billy chuckles, and sends her a kiss through the phone, "You're cute," he says, and replies with the remnants of a laugh. "Not a chance. I'll be finished up here with a story soon. Just get yourself all sexy like I know you are. And I'll see you at home in thirty."

Now, it's Victoria's turn to chuckle, "Why do I feel like I'm walking into something blindly?"

"Oh, because you are."

"Fine – I'll see you in thirty," Victoria relents, and hangs up while feeling butterflies and tingly all over.

Her head is still reeling with whatever surprise Billy has for her. Maybe it's about the way she always has to have control and be in the know and be in the loop. Victoria just wants a little clue and the smallest inkling. She chooses a champagne coloured strapless dress Victoria recently buys at Fenmore's. The colour gives off a slight sheen and sparkle as she turns around slightly to examine herself. It shows off her legs toned from yoga and she can't help but feel giddiness and an excitement that starts in her Jungle Rouge toes and travels upward.

Victoria checks her make-up done up light, runs a brush through her dark brown tresses, allowing it to fall freely around her bare shoulders.

Black strappy sandals are on her feet and grabbing her clutch of the same colour, Victoria heaves a deep sigh at her reflection in the full length mirror. Maybe she can take of mind of things with whatever sweet thing her husband engineers.

It's been a while since Victoria has anything to look forward to.

(The arbitration is the biggest battle of her life and the sting of losing another child isn't far behind.)

Here's to normalcy, Victoria thinks as the sound of Billy pulling up on the driveway is heard, or something that is pretty damn close.

The road to normalcy for her, she's come to believe, isn't as straight and clear cut.

Right now, the highway to normalcy for her is twisted in every nook and cranny and it's virtually unattainable at times. The highway to reaching normalcy is difficult for Victoria to navigate on her own at times: the sharp turns that are all of her trials and triumphs in her life, the crossroads that are always going to be between being an Abbott by marriage to the most wonderful man Victoria has ever known and being an Newman because the evidence is in her blood, flowing in her veins.

Becoming an Abbott is something Victoria is never anticipating, never thinking of (like mother, like daughter), and something that is unplanned, but then again she's learning a little every day not to be in control and maintain a tight grip on the predictable.

A little craziness, however, never hurt anyone, right?

Being with Billy is like diving into a pool of never knowing what's next.

It's okay – Victoria makes the conscience decision to dive in with both feet, head first and never swim against the current again.

Victoria still has no idea what this blind surprise is and what kind of adventure her husband makes her embark on, but still her heart races and beats a little faster against her ribcage when Billy walks in, kisses her and of course, slips outstretched hand into his.

"Your surprise awaits you."

She reacts as though she's forgotten something, and steps back a little.

"Wait, wait. Not that I don't like surprises but what if Delia and Reed need us?"

"See, I got that covered, babe," he replies, kissing the back of her hand while a small smile breaks out on her face. "Everybody knows about my surprise but you. But because he's Reed's dad, JT said it was cool and even Chloe gave it the green light and if you still have reservations," Billy reaches into his jacket pocket. "Our phones will be on vibrate and we'll come right back."

She sighs, finally relenting. Okay, okay – now, Victoria will stop trying to be in control and a little hyper-meticulous even though, she's been sort of wired that way from the very beginning.

Now, Victoria steps out and doesn't know where she's going. But she takes her husband's hand and wouldn't let go for the world.

(Close your eyes. Take a breath. Make a wish. And then jump.)

Billy takes the top of his car down and Victoria thinks the sunset would be absolutely amazing to paint right now. All of the colours of the sky meld and bleed (pinkorangeyellowpurple) into each other while the sun is a slowly descending ball of heat behind them. It's an artist's dream.

The evening breeze caresses Victoria's face as she and Billy continue to drive down the Genoa City highway as if floating on clouds.

There is absolutely nothing as perfect as this.

Run [ruhn] — to go quickly by moving the legs rapidly than at a walk and in such a manner that for an instant in each step all or both feet are off the ground; to depart quickly, flee or escape.

There is something like hope and optimism in the air as Victoria walks into the gynecologist's office.

She has to cling on to the possibility of adding to their blended family of four – a little person with equal parts Abbott and equal parts Newman. After the miscarriage, the thread becomes thinner and thinner, but Victoria has to hang on when there's nothing else.

Claire, the receptionist, greets her with happy hazel eyes and a sunny disposition to match.

"Good morning."

"Uh, hi – good morning," she tries not to pay attention to three other women in the room with round, full bellies obviously due to pour unlimited into their babies. Victoria maintains her composure like Daddy teaches her how. "I'm here for my ten thirty appointment with Dr. Okamura."

Claire blinks as her face takes on a look of recognition spreads, "Oh! Okay," the receptionist tugs a lock of her raven black hair behind her double pierced ear. Typing a few keys quickly on her computer, Claire glances up at Victoria through mascara-laden eyelashes. She smiles, from ear to ear. "Here you are. Victoria Newman Abbott. Ten-thirty. Have a seat and the doctor will be with you shortly."

Victoria suddenly becomes aware of the breath she's holding from the moment she steps into the gynecologist's office, stomach clenching and palms clammy with the beginnings of sweat.

She exhales, plasters on something like a smile as if the feeling of being hollow isn't something that bends her heart a little each day. Maybe, just maybe, that dull ache in her heart will subside and be replaced by the sound of her baby's very cry.

"Thank you."

The very smallest part of Victoria wisheswisheswishes that the two other women in the room aren't pregnant.

Resentment creeps over her and it takes everything in her not to take off running to nowhere in particular.

Of course, Victoria can't run.

She can't cry. She can't scream until her voice runs hoarse. She can't even breathe.

Ultimately, she can't give up on being a mother again, no matter how small the possibility.

The clock ticks nine fifty eight when Claire calls in the woman with the blonde bob with bright yellow sundress. She's glowing as pregnant women probably should. The same clock strikes ten oh nine when Claire's chipper voice calls in the second woman: a girl of about the age fifteen (notevenawoman), belly and round as her swollen feet show through red ballet flats. At least, her head of tight black curls bounce when she walks.

Again, for the third time (god, things happen in three's, right?), the third woman who's just starting to show is called in at ten eighteen. Victoria glances up at from the page of a magazine she's only pretending to read – honestly, her eyes have scanned the same damn sentence for seveneightnine times – to note the wedding ring on her finger with a light shining in her eyes.

Yes, Victoria deducts, silently by the way this woman's pats her stomach has such pure joy on her face, she's having her first baby.

That feeling of resentment returns and trickles down, making Victoria feel like a horrible person to the point of goosebumps on the skin and the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand at attention.

Here's something Victoria realizes while still in the waiting room of Dr. Okamura's office: she can hear the thoughts going rampant and bouncing around – the angel and the devil on her shoulders bicker and clash, setting off the World War III only she can't hear.

Let's clarify something: the string of miscarriages and losing her only child, isn't getting to her.

(she'snotcrazy)

"Victoria?"

Claire's chipper snaps her out of her trance and it makes her head slightly throb.

"Um, yes?"

"Dr. Okamura is ready to see to you now," Claire says and then her eyebrow goes up in concern. "Are you okay? You seem a little…flushed."

Victoria hides her shaking hand and tries to gather herself. She's great. She's fine.

She stands up from the chair, and smoothes out the fabric of her royal blue blouse.

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Okay," Claire says, beams at her and steps aside. "Then in that case, follow me."

It's ten twenty one and Victoria walks in, too late to run away from any reservations now.

Dream [dreem] — a succession of images, thoughts or emotions passing through the mind during sleep.

Billy should know – it's Common Sense, something that never has the chance to register in his brain because of blind desperation. The struggle to do fatherhood right and see Victoria happy is too damn frustrating. All he wants is to keep that dream of having a baby with his wife alive – not for her sake, but his too.

Here's a little tidbit of secret fact that keeps Billy up some nights, under the guise of finishing something for Restless Style: he loves having a daughter and he loves Delia to pieces, almost to the point to where he's caught off guard by it.

But honestly, Billy can't help but dream of having a son.

Life is full of choices. Full of things that have the potential to fall into place like jigsaw puzzle pieces or, on the other end of the spectrum, set of chain reactions that are so destructive. Maybe it's how Billy's brain is wired, maybe he always flirt with the aspect of the razor's edge.

Maybe, in every facet of his twentysomething life, Billy will always be something resembling an adrenaline junkie.

Or Innately Stupid.

(Who the hell knows?)

All Billy knows is that he has to think of Lucy being back where she belongs for his sanity and to keep his marriage alive. He has to hold on the fact that beneath their united front, Victoria doesn't harbor resentment for his actions and secretly hate underneath it all. Billy doesn't blame her – not even a little bit. He doesn't know where Victoria's head is at times. Sometimes, he doesn't know at all and that's frustrating.

Then again, all Billy hears now is the sounds Lucy makes when she wakes up in the morning and her little belly laughs when he blows raspberries on her tummy.

If only Billy is given a remote control with a functioning rewind button, life would be so different – a little more peace and a little less Self-Inflicted Insanity.

Lucy would be with them and Victoria would look at him the way she does before (lovelovelove), instead of the way she does right now (heartbreaksadnessbetrayal).

All Billy ever wants to do is make the dream of a having a family with Victoria into a reality, even by playing God and doing the damn thing himself.

(The Abbott Family Screw-up strikes again.)

Billy doesn't care what time he falls asleep in the Abbott poolhouse but he's thrown into a restless three hour sleep with dreams and sounds of Lucy on repeat.

Midnight [mid-nahyt] — the middle of the night; twelve o'clock at night.

The Ice Princess, Stuck-Up Victoria Newman annoys him, makes him crazy and really, makes Billy want to bang his head against a brick wall repeatedly.

But this new Uninhibited, No Holding Back Victoria scares Billy and all in the same sitting makes this woman with the Chronic Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in her not-so-far past, a bit scary and kind of sexy, and all shades of hot.

Billy feels a little like Dr. Frankenstein for helping Victoria find her Non-Existent Sense of Humour and figuring it's not the end of the world losing an iron-clad grip on Control.

And it's not a sin for Victoria to laugh at herself when she's not the Perfect Princess either, see the lighter side of things.

In all honesty, Billy's head would probably be running around with lot of things right now – the sound of Victoria's laugh, the way she wittingly banters with him in a way only she can, the way her smile reaches her eyes and adds a gleam to them – if Victoria isn't making out with him and doing all sorts of nice, awesome things to him that leave him on the verge of being naked while ending credits to Father Knows Best roll on the trailer television.

But hey, Billy happens to like being naked and likes Victoria naked even more, nowadays.

Especially on days like this when they go on more Non-Eventful Dates and hang out at the trailer watching old 50s sitcoms while time dissolves into knowing.

Here's something you probably know already: they don't really care.

"You're still a slob," Victoria murmurs against Billy's chest with a quiet chuckle while facing him on her side. Out of habit, Billy's hands discover every slope, every curve on this woman he loves a lot (he'll saythinkbelieve it without feeling like a dork now).

"And yet," Billy presses his lips to hers, pink and full, and she smiles against his, "I'm still lovable – drunk or not, it's a fact."

"Mmm, yeah, you are – you're my lovable slob."

She snuggles into him close, kisses him long while draping one of her legs over his torso (it's the dirty little habit Victoria never wants to break). Billy sighs, and wishes he can sleep like this forever and never wake up. Smiling against Victoria's loose hair, he lightly kisses her temple and smirks playfully.

Really, if Billy is her lovable slob, he gets to drop the Chicken Hawk nickname around as many times as his little heart desires.

Turns out 'Ice Princess' just loses its relevance.

"Yeah, yeah, Chicken Hawk."

It's a little close to midnight – or a little past there, who knows – when Billy discovers in his sleep that Victoria's hair smells like apples.

Whisper [wis-per] — to speak with soft, hushed sounds, using the breath, etc, but with no vibration of the vocal cords.

Everyone's busting his chops – even her, especially her (herewegoagain) – about the new Restless Style cover. Abby is naked from the shoulders up because if she isn't, Malcolm Winters is essentially fired and maybemaybe a dead mean. He's just putting that out there.

Of course, he's feeling a little bloodthirsty, a little vengeful but next time, Abby shouldn't wave Jamaica in his face and mortify her own sister for her fifteen minutes of fame.

Hey, it's editorial and the article isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Abby is still his niece and a little girl.

(He wins.)

Actually, Billy thinks as he's watching Victoria storm out ("you're such an insensitive jerk!") of the office, the article is quite Shakespearean and the oldest fight of all time, since the beginning of time.

His high school English teacher, Mrs. Ortega, and the writer also named William, would be proud.

Doesn't everything always come down to the love of woman?

"Dad! Dad – don't hit him. Just don't."

"You give me one reason why I shouldn't re-arrange his face."

Billy's face almost immune to the fist of The Great Victor Newman, and still, he makes it work with a shiner. It's not like he hasn't done it before.

"Because I love him."

Nobody else can hear that sound but Billy is almost sure he hears the world explode. He is going to walk right around Victor's glare, leave the building and see the Apocalypse or even Armageddon. Then it would mean the Mayans lie about 2012 and the end of the world is two years early. All because Victoria Newman says she loves him.

(What?)

"You're in love with this man?"

Billy uses his peripheral vision to discreetly look for the hidden cameras. Any minute cameras are going to crawl out of the woodwork. Ashton Kutcher is going to come around and tell Billy that he's being Punk'd.

Any. Minute. Now.

Victoria looks through, and around her father to allow her eyes to barely lock eyes with Billy. Either, Billy deducts, she's protecting him weirdly because a) Victoria is crazy and has some kind of lapse of judgment or b) she could actually give a damn about more than her father beating him to a pulp.

Victoria may give a damn about him.

Not that doesn't Billy sort of, kind of, almost gives a damn about her, but honestly, he still expecting the rapture or some kind of the end of the world as it exists at this present moment.

She rips her gaze away to look at her father and Billy wonders why the hell he feels something like Awkwardness with a little bit of Bewilderment and the smallest ounce of Relief.

And then Billy looks at her again and she meets him halfway because she can't be serious.

Billy watches her slender hand reach up and tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear – which are cute, by the way but that's not the point.

Victoria's answer comes as nothing but a slight whisper (oh dear god, there could be truth) under Victor's gaze and Billy's own skepticism, "Yes – yes, I am."

Fire [fah-yuhr] — a state, process or instance of combustion in which fuel or other material is ignited and combined with oxygen, giving off light, heat, and flame.

Billy leaves Restless Style on an overcast day in May to hang out with his old buddy from New York, Vincent Castillo, while he's in town for scoping out new space for his third restaurant. He's this really rich wine maker who works from Martha's Vineyard in the summer and owns a couple of restaurants along the South East Side in downtown Manhattan.

He's still recovering from Jamaica and getting married with rum cake and really, strong Jamaican rum, drinking until everybody's his friend and Victoria is all giggly. He remembers laughing more and doing the limbo until he gets sand in his new Jamaican themed boxers.

And then after all that, there's the hangover, the realization of marrying Victoria breaking through a drunken haze and there's still Rafe who has to get on the stupid annulment.

Besides, this Thing with Victoria is all about Fun and Casual Sex topped with Witty Banter.

There's never supposed to be anything remotely close to feelings and emotions so yeah, okay, she can have her stupid little annulment.

It's been a really chaotic, really erratic day but seeing Vince after nearly a year, is needed.

(And maybe, the strongest glass of scotch the Club has.)

Vince is Billy's right hand man during the time Billy is Liam and has sex with a girl because she wants it and he's a guy and if a girl drops her panties for him of her own free will, he's not complaining. They leave a trail of partying and conquests across New York's high-end club district. Sometimes, a very small part of him wishes Liam would come back. Liam gets plastered and parties hard until the wee hours of the morning, sunrise threatening to ruin his fun. Liam doesn't let a girl leave her mark (because New York socialites are all the same) and screw with his head.

Billy, on the other hand, cares too damn much.

Victoria Newman is slowly starting to get under his skin, and could be screwing with his head.

He hates that.

"Billy Abbott, there he is!" Vince greets with a beaming smile. Billy walks over, clasps hands with his old friend and sits across from him, ready to order a drink or five.

"Yeah, here I am. Welcome to good, sleepy GC, man."

Beating him to the punch, Vince calls over a light brunette waitress named Lisa. Her nametag says so, not that he's a mind reader because that would make Billy's life much easier. "Sweetheart, a brandy for me and a scotch for my buddy here."

"Alright," Lisa replies, glancing over at Billy, "scotch for you," and then waitress glances over Vincent a little longer than usual, light pink blush starting to spread over the apple of her cheeks, a different look in his friend's dark eyes, "and a brandy for you."

"You got it, babe."

"Two drinks coming right up."

"Thanks."

If Billy isn't so hung up on wanting that scotch so damn bad, he might notice Vince hitting on that waitress in a genuine way that maybeprobably involve getting into bed right away.

Billy would call the waitress out for blushing but he's not up for throwing stones at his Glass Trailer.

Maybe he should resign to the fact that images of Victoria Newman will never fade away from his psyche, contrary to the shiner on his face.

"You're not in Genoa City a couple days and you already hit on a waitress you've never met," Billy says, more to himself than Vincent. He remembers the day where he does that and life is simple.

"Being a cock-blocker isn't your strong suit. And yeah, contrary to belief, Lisa and I hung out with no talk last night. Technically, we have met," Vince replies, coolly, and takes a swig of brandy. He cocks his head, and smirks, "So, you're going to regale me of the story of how you landed that shiner."

Billy takes his glass, and downs it all and slightly grimaces as the familiar (it's all familiar to him) light brown liquid goes down and sets of a fire in his throat.

"No. I just wanna drink."

"Okay. I'm down with drinking," Vince replies, with a relenting shrug with a smile that makes Billy think that he knows more. "But whenever you want to tell me about getting plastered in Jamaica with Victor Newman's daughter, I'll be one call away or at my room right here."

Billy sighs, reaching up to rub the pulsating headache, starting at his temple and spreading at the front of his head.

"Man – I'm psyched you're here. But shut up."

Billy loves Abby too much to starting hating her. But that doesn't mean there isn't a little devil in his ear that whispers sweet nothings of vengeance and fanning the flames a little bit.

Vince rolls his eyes, resigning, "And here, I thought we were friends," he adds as a parting show that hangs over Billy's head, "Fine, considering the subject of getting plastered and becoming Mr. Victoria Newman dropped. I'm just saying; that Naked Heiress niece of yours with that video of hers? Resourceful."

Billy glares, orders another scotch, something stronger this time to drown out Jamaica like it never happens.

Whatever he has with Victoria – it's not deep enough that Billy can be labeled as her boyfriend, not shallow enough that Victoria's his booty call and it's Just Sex because she's too princess-like for that – isn't normal, not something that sparks and grows over time like everyone else.

It's a brushfire, a forest fire of sorts. That's it—the kind of fire Billy can't stop it if he tries.

(That's all it takes – just a little spark, baby.

So, let the flames begin.)

Drink [dringk] — to imbibe alcoholic drinks, especially habitually or to excess; excessive indulgence in alcohol.

Not only Billy Abbott still the King when it comes to Everything Vintage but even worse, he is the Duke of Screw-Ups and probably the Baron of Mistakes. Or something like that.

The fact of the matter is that it seems the art of fucking up (because that's it is, let's not sugarcoat anything; it is what it is) is his own little Superpower, screw-ups and mistakes sticking to Billy like a magnet. Even when Billy tries his damndest to do the right thing, Billy finds himself in a deeper hole than ever before.

New Year's Eve is still engrained in his psyche and a future without him living still sends a cool chill up his back. Dad should be happy; his son's on the straight and narrow, being one of those straight shooters Billy makes fun of.

Every night Lucy isn't home – where he and Victoria can give her everything she needs and everything she deserves and home isn't the same without her in it – makes the guilt weigh against Billy and his already splintering conscience. It bends against the weight of his past shortcomings and failures; the weight of the demons of his past. Hong Kong and a twelve-hour time difference can't keep him away losing everything or winning it all in one on instant. The euphoria that he gets because of the indulgence in alcohol never really goes away and is always tempting.

Can you really blame him?

It's easy like autopilot, like clockwork: open whiskey, tequila, or hell, if bubbly works and tickles a fancy or two, pour and drink until laughter sounds right and every word that is stupid when sober actually sounds like something written from The Bible or from the quill of Shakespeare, himself.

But then, there's Lucy, Delia, hell, even Reed, and his love for Victoria and this house he buys with her all jumbled up Billy's brain and he can't bring himself to drink, even when the tequila is gleaming brown.

The heavy guilt Billy feels when he holds Victoria, Lucy's stuffed toys a part of the décor as they are strewn in between the couch cushions, makes Billy wonder if he bites more than he can chew.

"I guess," she sniffles, quietly, "in the worst case scenario, we'll have to let Lucy go."

Billy doesn't show it but his chest constricts, painfully. "Can you really live with that, if Daniel actually decides to raise Lucy? We're the only parents she knows," Because I can't, Billy adds in his head but can't bring himself to vocalize, and I can't without you, Vickie.

"We don't have a say," is her reply with a shuddering sigh. "Not me, not you, not even Phyllis. Just Daniel. The only good thing about all this is that Daisy won't be stupid enough to risk jail and come back."

This is all his fault and that realization weighs heavier on Billy's splintering conscience.

(Billy's dangerously close to drinking the wedding wine in the cabinets.)

Search [surch] — to go through a place, area, etc, carefully in order to find something missing or lost.

There's a whole side of Billy Abbott that people don't see, Victoria realizes, long before she's about to become a mother and a wife all in one sitting. Of course, Billy does some things that questionable, glaringly stupid and just plain wrong, but there's the other side of him, the other side of the Restless Style Editor and the notorious playboy. He's more than that, just like Victoria realizes with Billy's help that her life is more than being Daddy's Princess.

There's the guy who is smarter than he actually looks.

There's the Billy Abbott that Victoria sees when she looks at him and has no choice but to smile: he challenges her, makes her laugh more than she has in a while, has legitimately intellectual stances and opinions that makes Victoria gaze at Billy silently while he sleeps, wondering how in the world she gets so lucky.

(Even when Victoria isn't looking for someone like Billy; not even a little bit.)

After JT and Victoria divorce and Reed isn't in her custody anymore, she feels lost and a little cheated but Victoria can't help that. Dreams are lost. A future that is supposed to withstand forever is shattered.

She's supposed to take her husband and son to Florence for summers and rent a little house on the Tuscan coast because Italy is always beautiful this time of year. She misses feeling the cobblestone streets underneath her feet. Suddenly, Victoria doesn't get to breathe in the salty, Florentine air or watch the Tuscan sunset underneath an Italian sky.

All Victoria does, is search for something that fades away long before official divorce papers that says in the eyes of the law she's a newly divorced woman.

Vanity, vanity, King Solomon says, it's all vanity like chasing the wind.

Here's all of things she's lost: the connection that makes JT and Victoria in love and in sync once upon a time, Friday nights with Reed baking cookies, his face alight when he gets to lick the chocolate chip cookie batter, and ultimately, the ambience of a happy, warm and loving home.

But here's what Victoria gains, regardless of whether she wants it or not: Billy Abbott's company and a cookie with a poorly-drawn pair of boxer shorts in blue and white icing.

The end of a chapter in Victoria's life ends, but in retrospect, she admits she sees it coming. Like an oncoming, speeding train with headlights blindingly bright and the Restless Style article of her affair fanning the flames. But it's her mistake – Victoria's fault. She sleeps with Deacon because Victoria feels at the time like a relationship that starts out comfortable, and warm has disintegrated to something unrecognizable. She has no control, or doesn't know how to stop her marriage from imploding on itself.

(There's no time machine here or anywhere in sight.)

"My divorce just became final today."

"Oh," Billy replies, glancing at the pages of legal paper on the center table. "Look, if it's any consolation, divorces suck, regardless of who you were married to. I married Chloe for my daughter's sake and even I knew that was doomed from the start. You and JT, on the hand, loved each other," he exhales, adds quietly. It's still awkward to hear Billy Abbott apologize. "I'm sorry. Shoulda never published that stupid article."

Victoria sighs, plopping next to him on the couch, heart pounding against her throat.

"Yeah," and then three strong heartbeats later. "I'm sorry, too."

Maybe, Victoria is in an alternate universe but Billy looks at her with this honest look on his face and says the most astute thing to her.

Like it's the sound of settling among such disarray.

"Sometimes," Billy says, sincerely, "it's like the phoenix: you gotta be burned to ashes before you rise out of them and become a better, stronger person."

She doesn't shrug Billy's arm off, because she needs all of the comfort she can get.

And that's why Victoria is going against everyone and is marrying Billy regardless. That's why she's on Nick's doorstep, about to beg him to give her away when everyone else tells her she's making a mistake. Because really, Nick is her brother and loves her. Of that, she's sure of. There's nothing more powerful than having a blood bond and sharing the experience of growing up at Elite European Boarding Schools.

That's why he should give her away to the man she chooses to love when Victor vehemently refuses.

Her search for warmth and love and support is over now that for she's found that in Billy.

Victoria wishes Nick would understand.

(He has to. That's the Sibling Natural Order of Life.)

So, she takes in a deep breath and raps on the door to the tack house.

Silence [sahy-luhns] — the absence of sound or noise; stillness or muteness.

The mirror fogs slightly around the corners and the steam infused with the scent of Shea butter and a hint of skin-soothing aloe Vera wafts around the room. Victoria wipes her forearm against the smooth surface and audibly sighs. Even with the judge permitting the adoption and Lucy being her daughter (she's theirs from the second Victoria lays hesitant eyes and opens her already broken heart to the little girl with red hair) in the eyes of the law, Victoria can't help but allow the smallest bit of anxiety to rear its ugly head.

Pulling her hair into a messy bun, Victoria brushes a few free tendrils away from her face to no avail. Billy tells her to enjoy the present and the now because Phyllis won't win. She can't.

Victoria lets out another sigh, shuts the bathroom light with a click and prepares for a sleep that will inevitably evade her.

She doesn't have psychotic tendencies, Victoria really doesn't – she recalls with a shudder being stalked by one; the nude centerfold of her teenage days never disappearing, and she's nearly shot by a Psychotic Ex-Wife underneath her masquerade – but Victoria loves her family so much she might as well be a Repressed, Maternal-Fueled, Momma Lioness Psychopath or something.

While the bubbles wash over her and the steam gives Victoria glimpses of relaxation and silence, she finds her mind wandering, thinking all of the ways Phyllis can meet some unfortunate end: having her car brakes cut, getting shot and killed by a hand of Coincidental (Tragic) Chance, becoming a pedestrian fatality, becoming Comatose, poisoning by arsenic or cyanide –

And then rationale breaks through all of the thoughts Victoria wishes on her ex-sister-in-law and painfully reminds her that Phyllis is the mother of her niece if not anything else.

How Phyllis sleeps at night knowing she's endangered Lucy by luring Daisy back to Genoa City makes Victoria's blood boil underneath the foamy, watery surface.

Let's reiterate this: Victoria isn't a killer, has not one murdering bone in her body, but she's a mother, willing to do anything to keep her family from crumbling and shattering. Is that such a sin?

(Victoria chooses poisoning by cyanide: there's immense pain as the body shuts down and the victim dies, and she wouldn't mind watching Phyllis suffer if she has a dead conscience, a torched Moral Compass and is ballsy enough to face jail after the fact.)

Sometimes, when Victoria glances at Billy and stare him in the eyes, words and phrases like baby broker and illegal and two million dollars tumble around her head and before eyes mist over and tears threaten to pool in them ("I did this for you, Vickie. I love you."), Victoria has to silence them, and blink them back.

She forces herself to silence the thoughts running through her mind so that her heart opens up and realizes through all of this, she needs Billy more than anything else. After all, this is his handiwork but her husband is who understands and feels the white hot pain of losing Lucy, not once, but twice, just like her.

Here's a tradition Victoria starts with Billy long before they're husband and wife, long before this house as it captures Father Knows Best at a standstill, and a little after she begins to tolerate his company: they lie in bed and talk in soft whispers, laying face-to-face. It's at this time that Victoria tells Billy tells everything; her thoughts and feelings, plans for the future – whatever what that may be – tinged with newfound humour. In Billy's silence, Victoria relishes in the sensation of his hand playing with hers. She even feels the ghost of Billy's lips, lightly dancing across her knuckles.

On other nights, Victoria is the one who smiles in silence and chuckles on occasion, slipping a leg over her husband's torso like she always does. He talks and presses her lips to his. Billy is the one who talks and leaves Victoria blown away like opening a window into an exciting new place.

She even giggles and laughs.

Tonight, the tradition still continues.

"Babe, what's wrong?"

The slight shifting on bed sheets against skin. The blinking of lights of a baby monitor on an old fashioned, vintage night table.

The ticking of a clock. The organization of a closet. The framed pictures of a bride and groom on a sunny September morning, a grinning boy with a head of sun-kissed blond hair, a little girl who smiles and shows off a purple party dress with sparkly shoes to match, and one of a baby girl with red hair and the beginnings of a smile, brown eyes round and bright.

"Nothing. I'm just exhausted. That's all."

"It's never nothing when you're way too quiet like that," Billy leans over, patting her thigh. "Let me have it."

A heaving sigh. A feeling that makes Victoria cold and her stomach start to bend and twist.

"I know we agreed on not worrying about keeping Lucy but it's very hard to blindly assume anything now that there's Phyllis and Daisy being back – "

A pair of familiar lips that meet her own and then a hand that gently strokes her cheek.

"Listen to me. Right now, Lucy is next door sleeping obliviously. She's gonna wake up and smile at us because Lucy knows. We're the only parents she knows. I messed up. I messed up badly, but now, in the eyes of the law, Lucy is our daughter in every way that matters. Lucy is Reed and Delia's little sister. That's it."

A slow look of resolve. The smell of musk and a strong heartbeat strumming in her ear.

"Honey," a pair of strong, muscular arms that encircle Victoria and a soft voice in her ear, "Lucy is ours. I can assure you that."

Why doesn't believe that in her heart of hearts?

You don't know that. You can't know that, wants to fall out of her lips but the words settle precariously on the tip of her tongue and are pressed against the back of her freshly-brushed teeth.

(Fool her once, shame on her because Victoria's not stupid. She's anything but.

Fool her twice – well, Victoria hasn't thought that far ahead. Her heart won't let her.)

Another released sigh that escapes her unaware.

Victoria merely maintains her silence, and settles into Billy's fold, praying to fall asleep somehow.

Forgotten [fer-got-n] — to cease or fail to remember; to be unable to recall.

Victoria can't help laugh at herself in the most sarcastic of ways because really, this is her own fault, her own doing.

Of course, Billy would write about anything Newman if the price is large enough.

Yet, she chooses to forget about that because she may or may not love him.

She makes the conscious decision to forget that (and that's what hurts the most.)

"Ever have big, wonderful plans for something to be great only to have it fall flat?" Victoria questions, rhetorically to her brother – she's not excepting an answer, partly because she knows the answer. While hanging out with her brother, talking like they should as Siblings and drinking beer, Victoria quietly realizes foolishly this is the problem: people have a tendency to think that they can change what can't be changed and they forget that they are only mere and mortals cannot twist The Compass of Fate, no matter how much they try.

Nick snorts, almost as if to emptily laugh at himself and takes a long swig of beer out of the bottle.

"Vick, I think unrealistically high expectations that hurt us," he casts a long glace at his older sister, sideways, "especially the ones that are doomed from the beginning."

She rolls her eyes. "Nice jab at Billy there. Subtle."

Nick merely shrugs, "Wasn't trying to be. You already know how I feel about Billy."

"Oh, yes – I know," Victoria says, and adds more to herself, "You and Dad and this stupid decades old Newman-Abbott feud won't let me forget it."

The antique gun worth nearly three quarters of a million is something that Victoria does under her father's direction – a ploy to shut the Japanese market up and make sure that Beauty of Nature stays on shelves lest McCall Unlimited swoop in like vultures. But being the journalist ("Journalism," Victor scoffs. "Is that what that is?") that Billy is, she walks into his trailer and finds the truth of what her father makes her do. It's glaring at her and bright from the screen of his laptop.

Victoria merely looks from his to the computer back to Billy, who simply wears on his face a look that simply says that she knows everything, he's going to say and do before she does.

The words escape her and she forgets what she's going to say or yell – either way, Billy has this habit of making her forget what she wants to say, and it's annoying.

Because really, let's be honest: Victoria's secret is out in the open, a living, breathing elephant in the trailer living room that sucks the oxygen out of the space everywhere and between, so really, there's nothing to say.

"I was gonna wait for you to explain this yourself, but I thought 'hey, I'm going find out what shenanigans Victor put his daughter up to' and found this," Billy doesn't move from his spot on the couch, the antique gun right in front of her. Victoria can't forget the way his blue eyes bore intensely into hers and expect an explanation like she actually owes him one. "This baby is worth three quarters of a million. I saw with that box in your dad's office and again in Japan through the miracle of sliding doors. Care to explain that?"

Victoria glances at her designer shoes, and musters up the most diplomatic tone she can.

"No," she says, defiantly, "because there's nothing to explain," and Victoria even throws in an off-handed shrug for good measure. "The antique gun was a gift. My father couldn't go, so he sent me. Would you stop crucifying me?"

He sighs, smirks slightly, "You're a bad liar. You'd be an even worse poker player."

"Billy – "

"I'm gonna save us both the trouble: the gun was used as a bribe to keep something related to Newman Enterprises, which I deducted, is probably to Beauty of Nature in the back of Victor's deep pockets. That would be why Tucker and my sister were there," Billy deducts, and yeah, okay, he's getting warmer. "Basically, it was used as insurance: as I said – a bribe, right?"

Victoria knows that and knows not to forget something called commercial bribery; a criminal offense according to the Department of Justice that can result in prison, but she does it anyway.

Suddenly, Victoria glances from the computer to Billy and is overcome by a sense of urgency; like no one else can know, which in turn, means that he cannot write anything about this in Restless Style.

No matter how much he wants because hey, let's not forget like daddy says: anything scandalous with the name Newman attached to it will always bring that glint in Billy's eyes. Victoria finds herself getting lost in the deep blues of them nowadays and forgets the world around her for a little while, as if she's swimming or going along a tranquil current.

"Billy, you cannot write about this. Please don't," Victoria nearly begs. She gazes at him. "Promise me you won't – no matter how much you want to."

"Don't worry about it," Billy says as if she says the sky is falling and the trailer's a bomb shelter. He closes the lid of the laptop, crosses over to where she is. Before Victoria can justify it, Billy takes her into his fold and somehow she enjoys the way her head rests on his strong, broad shoulder. She sighs into his back, feeling the muscles ripple underneath her hands. "Your secret's safe with me."

Victoria has no words to say after that, but she thinks she forgets how it feels to have butterflies, fluttering around in the deepest part of her stomach.

(No one's given Victoria butterflies in the longest time.)

(He likes me, he likes me not, he loves me – )

In all of this Victoria seems to forget that Billy is who he is, the guy who gossips as his livelihood as long as there are high sales numbers.

Maybe it's way Billy kisses her under the bright glare of the camera. Maybe it's the way he looks at her when he whispers he seems to be crazy about her and even more when she whispers, glancing at him through mascara-coated eyelashes, that she feels the same.

So, how could that moment be shattered by a few words and a few taps of a laptop keyboard?

(he apparently forgets. and she doesn't wanna remember tonight.)

"Nick, it's stupid and I'm mad at him but Billy gives me butterflies," she groans, and pushes her dark brown tresses back. "Oh God, I sound like a really bad love song."

Her brother meets her eyes, looking like the teenager fresh from boarding school for a split second, "I remember feeling like that."

Billy betrayed, and lied to her and that should be the end of it – but really it's not.

It's just the beginning of Victoria forgetting that her trust issues are there.

Here's something Victoria comes to realize with the help of Jill, no less, because she's Billy's mother – her boyfriend's (it's a little love quarrel and a night of watching the voicemails pile up until they stop) mother: it's Jill who publishes the story of Tucker and the antique gun and the commercial bribery.

"And," Jill adds, as an afterthought as Victoria's chai tea starts to get cold, "Billy does have genuine feelings for you. My own son fired me because of you, so that's something you should think about."

Jill says goodbye, and Victoria is left blushing from half-flattery (his password actually spells V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A, her pretty little head spins with something that can very well be L-O-V-E) and half from the embarrassment of making assumptions (read: there's a reason there are the words ass and me in them) she's still wired to do.

How can she forget?

Sacred [sey-krid] — entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.

"May I have the rings, please?"

"Oh," Victoria starts to explain, makes some sort of attempt but looks to Billy for help because this is a snap decision made in bed as they lightly touch on the top of discussing baby names. She lowers her voice. "You want to tell them?"

Billy glances at all of the people who aren't itching to throw congratulatory of them, but still show up.

"Yeah, I think we should tell 'em."

"Okay."

Judge Anderson looks at Victoria expectantly, and then at Billy. She understands that things like wedding bands and the ambience of a church is generally needed for a wedding. But Victoria wants to break away from conventionalism because Victoria is overjoyed to become Billy's wife and the mother of the third child of their blended family.

Victoria takes a deep breath, "Uh, we decided to get our wedding bands tattooed on."

To her, that's more sacred than a piece of jewelry or the confines of a church. Besides, as corny as it is, the church won't be able to hold the love she has for the man standing a short distance from her.

The names Victoria and Billy pick out after ones that make her laugh ("Babe," she chuckles, as his hand is protectively on her stomach, "our child isn't going through life with a name like Candy. The baby will hate us.") or ones that are in Victoria's No Name Mental Pile long before Billy comes up with them, but she humors him.

Victoria believes baby names are sacred and symbolic, too. Babies and weddings are the symbols of new beginnings. In the morning, she's going to be Mrs. William Abbott and the euphoric feeling of pregnancy.

So, here's their sleepy compromise:

if it's little girl, she'll be named Elizabeth (after Liz Foster, Katherine's closest friend, Jill's mother and the woman Billy will always consider his grandmother besides Katherine. It sucks that I didn't get to say goodbye but I miss Grandma Liz a lot, Billy tells her his reasoning behind the name. Just something that'll make my mom happy) Colleen, because it's because of Colleen her father lives; it's a double-edged sword, and something Billy always wants as a middle name for their daughter, even though he never says so. His niece is his best friend, the one person who never judges him even he screws up and it's warranted.

As Colleen does in her life, Victoria wants her daughter to see the beauty in everything she comes across and be an inspiration to everyone. She can't help but be touched; the tears welling up in her eyes are from that, and probably hormones.

And if it's a little boy: James (as in Jim Anderson from Father Knows Best that she'll affectionately call Jamie, just because she can), Foster (because Billy would be happy to have a son and give Delia and Reed a little brother; besides it would be a gift to her husband and a gesture that means this little boy truly has little pieces of them).

Victoria sighs in her sleep, because her daughter can be Elizabeth Colleen Abbott or her son can be James Foster Abbott. The names may change when inspiration strikes but until then she would die a happy and contented woman if the happens tomorrow.

Thinking and dreaming of the next eight months and beyond leave Victoria tingling with joyful anticipation.

"You'll be there when I'm in labour, right?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

"Even when my nails dig into your skin and I say things I don't mean?"

Billy smirks, shrugging lazily, "I'm there," and then he leans in and kisses her. Victoria laughs quietly, against his lips before pulling away, but only slightly. "If all else fails, I'll duck and cover."

The sun shines on the September day with beautiful decorations of soft lavender, bright blues and pristine, sheer whites and ivories.

Victoria smiles at Billy, stares into his blue eyes more ready and willing to marry him. She smiles a little more, and he winks.

The lawn in front of their home (home is where her heart is, she realizes) is more sacred than a little, generic chapel underneath the bright lights of Las Vegas or the grand structure and multi-coloured, stained glass windows.

Body [bod-ee] — the physical structure and matter substance of an animal or plant, living or dead.

Dr. Caroline Sullivan is a nice woman with short blonde hair cut just beneath her jawline, bright green eyes which seem to have a perpetual happiness about them Victoria quietly envies.

She still can't believe that Lucy isn't coming home. And Victoria can't believe even more that Billy just up and leaves – no, she concludes it probably doesn't matter that she hasn't heard from her husband in nearly forty-eight hours and left eight and a half (read: the half is what she wants to say before Victoria has no breath and no strength to say anything else before pressing delete) voicemails.

Victoria sniffles, sets the wedding photo down and wipes at her eyes as the doorbell rings.

She's still surprised her body can move, and she breathes.

(because really, Victoria is simply frozen in a nightmare so far from Father Knows Best.)

"Hi," Dr. Sullivan says on her doorstep. She holds out a hand with white French manicured nails that Victoria shakes, for the sake of niceties and pleasantries. Why else? "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Abbott. I'm Dr. Caroline Sullivan."

Victoria clears her throat and takes her hand away, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"Call me Victoria, please," and then she steps aside, giving the clinical psychologist an avenue to step into an all too empty house.

"Of course. Only if you call me Caroline. My father likes to keep the Dr. Sullivan title for himself."

Victoria forces a smile, bending the muscles to turn the corners of her lips upward like they have their own will, like there's a reason to smile.

"Right."

She allows Dr. Sullivan – oh, right, Caroline – to enter as the therapist takes a seat on the couch.

Victoria tries to breathe and exhales a breath, she's painfully aware she's keeping in.

She would relate to Caroline and her father if she doesn't follow so damn hollow and her body doesn't feel like it's holding all of the weight of her sadness.

(Victoria misses Billy underneath her pain and wishes he's here to at least carry it with her.)

The very first session Victoria has with Caroline, there's not much to say.

Victoria still feels regret about unloading on Billy in the manner she does, but it's the most cleansing feeling she's experienced in a very long time.

The second session flies by, and Victoria answers from things she can't remember being asked, nods when she's supposed to, watches Caroline take a pen to a notebook with a bright yellow smiley face on the cover.

Apparently, Caroline is smiling at her like she's actually present.

"I'll see you for our next session, Victoria."

"Okay," she replies, hearing her own voice emerge from being drowned in memories of Lucy: her laugh, her red hair, her smile, her bright eyes in the morning. "Thank you, Caroline."

So, this is what going through the motions feels like.

Victoria sits in the single seat across from Caroline trying to be mentally present for the fourth session. She eventually decides to get a marriage counselor for the sole purpose of getting things off her heavy chest. It's nice to be able to also gain some perspective that Victoria initially can't through the hurt, sadness, depression and anger blending and settling over her like a thick, unbearable fog.

"Since, this is our first session," Caroline explains, crossing her legs clad with skinny jeans and Converse sneakers, "we're just going to establish some boundaries. Nothing too deep right now. If there's something you're not up for talking about, feel free to let me know. Nothing you tell me leaves these walls and everything is at your discretion."

She nods, heartbeat loud and pulsating in her ears.

"I understand."

Caroline is a nice woman who takes her career seriously (like her once upon a time), and the best thing is that she has no emotional stake in her situation.

The therapist's green eyes scan around the living room, a look of silent awe setting on her features with a smile gently on her pink, glossed lips.

"I see your home has a very retro energy about it. Would you like to tell me about it?"

Victoria resists the urge to fiddle with her wedding ring.

"Well," Victoria starts, and takes a deep breath, "it's modeled exactly like Father Knows Best. My husband and I – that was one of the things we had in common. And of course, I can't speak for him but," she places a hand on her chest, feeling her heart race underneath her hand. She's afraid to stop talking or she'll lose the composure she works so hard to build and dissolves into sobs. Victoria smiles, fondly and genuinely for the first time since the court says Lucy isn't her daughter anymore, "I love this house. We were hanging out, ready to have a Father Knows Best marathon and," she chuckles lightly because Victoria doesn't choose to laugh she may cry, "and right at the beginning, the power died out. I was lighting candles when he came back with Braille Cream in his hair and '50s garb. That was the moment I fell for him."

"That's a lovely story and might I add, you have a lovely house," Caroline's perfectly done eyebrows knit together, and there's the sound of pen scratching the surface of lined paper. And then her eyes land on the framed photo of their wedding. "Your wedding must've been beautiful."

Despite everything against her, against them, it is.

It's the most beautiful day of her life.

"Yeah," Victoria nods, sniffling and whipping the tears away that blur her vision slowly. "It was."

If only the therapist could see Victoria's heart shatter a little more, and the pain that seems worse to Victoria when she takes the slightest breath.

"Where is your husband? If you don't mind me asking."

Victoria glances up and shrugs, praying that Billy walks through the door at that very second.

"I – I don't know," Victoria lies, smoothly.

"Caroline," Victoria asks, on the last session of individual counseling, "do you have children?"

Caroline blinks, her happy disposition faltering slightly, and nods, "Yes. Two daughters and a son with my ex-husband – Kelsey, Rebecca, and Griffin; thirteen, eleven, and nine. Why do you ask?"

"Because if you ever lost them, you would feel like your world just ended, right?"

Six sessions and a box of tissues later, Caroline gets to hear all about Lucy: the good, the bad, the worse and the ugly.

Victoria watches Caroline's usual happy and optimistic disposition falter slightly because she may be a therapist, but above it all, she's a mother.

"And how did it feel to lose Lucy, Victoria?"

"The same as it would feel like if you were to lose your children, Caroline."

The feeling is almost akin to it being an out-of-body experience – like watching someone else's family torn to shreds, the carnage too bloody.

(Or Victoria's heart being stabbed over and over – it all hurts the same.)

Red [red] — any of the various resembling of the colour of blood; the primary colour at one extreme end of the visible spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 610 and 780 nm.

For some reason Billy can't understand, he orders the most expensive bottle of red wine the Club has and does what he does best: drink to erase the heel prints Victoria leaves somewhere near his heart.

Which is a total and complete mindfuck – maybe that's why he can't numb up the way he used to.

Awareness, especially of the Self-Discovering Variety, is glaring bright and red hot when sober.

"Damnit," Billy curses quietly and gets up, leaving the wine in the nicely set table. Of course, Billy is that giant of an asshole so he leaves a couple Benjamin Franklins folded underneath the wine bottle.

(That woman his him so damn sprung and the red wine leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.)

Even though Billy admits to being shit-faced and still having a blown mind from The Future Devoid of Billy Abbott, he takes Victoria's red scarf. He looks damn sexy in that red scarf by his own account. It smells like name of an expensive feminine perfume Billy can't remember.

Is it so fucked up that now that scent is etched onto his brain, and that Billy can't get Eau de Ice Princess out of his head?

She has a beautiful smile.

(It's just an observation. That's all. Don't read too much into that because it's all Consensual, Non-Romantic Sex to him.)

Victoria grins and plucks a few rose petals and stuffs them down her deep red masquerade ball gown. The red petals peek out of the top of her bodice and Billy is thinking of many ways to free them.

"Well," Victoria says, voice low and seductive against the buzz of champagne and a masquerade ball, "it seems like I've accidently put some petals down my dress. I'm going to need to need some help."

Billy smirks, takes her hand and presses a light kiss to her knuckles.

"It would be my pleasure. Lead the way, m'lady."

And she does while giggling all the way to the suites upstairs.

Closing the door with his foot, Billy takes her and watches as the dark red gown pools around her ankles.

(Here's a deduction Billy makes while Victoria moans and says his name as she climaxes and he just wants to wait, wait, wait – oh, there it is: Victoria Newman is the definition of lady in the street but freak in the sheets. Not that he's complaining because yeah, he's a happy bastard.)

"So, what? Next time, are you just going to handcuff me to the bed posts?"

Victoria sighs, slowly smiles.

"Billy, don't give me ideas like that. I may go through with them."

He flips her over in one swoop so she's looking up at him. She laughs, until her cheeks flush red and her eyes light up.

"Do I look like a man who pays attention to warnings?"

"Touché, William."

Billy kisses Victoria as she leaves a trail of deep red lipstick kisses behind.

Driving home from the Club to the trailer, Billy comes to a red light. His ringtone blares and of course, Victoria is splayed across his screen like God plays an Unfunny Joke on him.

Overwhelmed [oh-ver-hwelm-ed] — to be overcome completely in mind and feeling; as in to be overcome with remorse.

Billy doesn't touch that girl – and what Victoria doesn't seem to understand is that he could have.

Even with a full frontal view of a lace bra and boobs, he could have.

And okay, he doesn't care about how much his bet makes or costs him. It's a frivolous, stupid idle curiosity that isn't going anywhere.

After all that, Billy is overwhelmed with the fact that his marriage is worse off than before.

(Billy's sad and yeah, he's freaking hurt too. He hates himself more than anyone ever could so forgive him if sobriety sucks right now.)

His phone rings and Billy finds him angrier and angrier when it's Victoria's ringtone playing from his phone and her face splashed across his screen. He wants nothing more than to grab Victoria by the shoulders and go home. Billy wants to tell Victoria that she's the only one who understands what's he's feeling because she hurts too (we all bleed the same, handsome). Billy wants to tell Victoria honestly that he wants to be next to her again and Victor, as always, is full of shit.

There's a little voice that sings that same song and dance about Billy Abbott being the Maker of his Misery.

Billy has a knack for Self-Sabotage, even the Unintentional Kind.

(Aren't you aware? Of course, you are – it's all everybody throws in his face these days.)

When he's in high school and basketball season ends, Billy lands a spot on the Walnut Grove swim team.

He cuts through water effortlessly and easily, as if the water is similar to anti-gravity and he doesn't know what it feels like to completely drown and sink to the bottom.

Until now.

"What would CeCe say if she saw me now?" Billy questions to air and drinks right out of the scotch bottle. He laughs and is so drunk that Victoria's hurt face and tear rimmed eyes are a fuzzy (my dad was right about youyouyou) bad memory. Tomorrow, he'll wake up sober and be home – tap his shoes three times, follow a stupid yellow brick road and go home.

"I don't know," a familiar says, behind him and makes Billy spring out of the couch. She looks the same as she does before she dies, before Patty Williams is set loose by Victor and before things get complicated. Colleen smiles, crossing the room before placing her hands on her hips in front of him. "I'd say absolutely nothing because I wouldn't kick you when you're down. You love that about me, remember?"

Billy hugs her, and she's damp, leaving a trail of lake water. She sighs, against his chest as the water soaks through his chest, but he doesn't give a damn. "I miss you," he whispers against her dark, wet hair. "I miss you so damn much, CeCe."

Ghosts seem to visit him most when he's most drunk.

Maybe Colleen is a figment of his drunk, desperate imagination. And maybe, he's so overwhelmed that Billy starts seeing his dead niece when Dad is probably kicking Jack's ass and can't swing by.

She pulls away, and sits on the couch, pats a spot next to her.

"Park your ass over here, and let's talk."

Billy misses this, he thinks with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia that seems almost within reach.

"I never liked Victoria, ever since she married my dad. But she makes you happy, and that's all I could ever want for you."

Billy rolls his tired eyes. It's like he's awake for days and days on end – the calendar blending in and the hours merging together with no pauses in sight.

He snorts in hollow laughter, "Just yesterday, we had Lucy. We had her, and everything was great."

"And then it wasn't. Ah, life – wish I still had mine. Only sometimes."

"Me too."

Colleen smiles softly, and chuckles, "I've always loved one thing about you: when you want something, you go after it," she sighs, clapping her hands. "So, go save your marriage and everything will fall into place. Never thought I'd see the day Billy Abbott rolled over and called it a day."

"I know you're doing. Stop it."

"Stop what? Hmm?" Colleen rebuts, sounding angry, and then softens. "Look, just be the bigger person here. You and I both know you love Victoria, and she's hurt, yes – but the woman doesn't hate you."

Billy chuckles, even when there's nothing funny. Yes, he's officially lost his mind.

His dead niece tosses out marriage advice from beyond the grave.

"My cynicism calls bullshit. I lost one daughter and may lose another, so I'm sorry. My life is not all rainbows and sunshine right now."

"I don't have a life anymore and if it's any consolation," Colleen says, in the silence, "Victoria's in the same sad mood as you so neither is hers," she fingers the material of her purple scarf between the pads of her fingers, takes a hand and covers Billy's shaking one. "She never wanted you to go. And beneath the hurt, she's missing you."

"How do you know?"

"Open your eyes. She's reverting to her old habits too."

He's surprised to hear his own voice breaking and inhales to keep the tears back.

"I'm feeling like crap right now," Billy admits, with an overwhelming feeling of tightness in his chest and even more feeling of being helpless. "I feel so fucking guilty."

"Congratulations, Uncle Billy," Colleen replies, with a knowing smile and a familiar glint in her eyes. "You're human and therefore, are capable of making mistakes. You'll fix it, though."

"How?"

She sighs, rolling her eyes at him, playfully. "You're Billy Abbott – you'll find your own solution."

Here's what Billy thinks is the best possible solution, if possible: a remote control with instant rewind capabilities, then he'd hit that button and pretend January the thirteenth and that meeting behind the abandoned golf course never happens.

(Let's go back to yesterday.)

"And if I didn't already tell you, I miss you too, and I love you."

Billy wakes up with sobriety washing over him like a tidal wave – like he's above water again, and an overwhelming sense of resolve to place daffodils on his niece's grave in the morning as a thank you, CeCe and an even more stronger resolve to put the pieces of his marriage together.

Somewhat true to his nature, Billy Abbott can help but also be overwhelmed by the gut wrenching feeling of failure.

Forever [fawr-ev-er] — without ever ending; eternally.

If commitment and monogamy ends up existing as a phobia proven by a dude in a white lab coat, Billy Abbott will be the first to admit that he has those phobias. At least Mac knows him well enough to point out in such terms that Billy's list of sexual conquests and Angry Ex-Girlfriends outweigh the list of Meaningful Relationships.

Looking back, in hindsight, the concept of forever is stretch and yet, it's within Billy's reach so he grabs his chance and promises himself not to mess up.

"This," Henry says, holding a ring with a glittering middle diamond and two smaller ones around it. It's the seventh ring so far, "is the ring for your lady. This is it, man."

Billy takes a look, bringing it into his line of vision. The sunlight hits the stone and makes rainbow-coloured patterns on the counter. He pictures it on Victoria's finger and the way it would fit smugly like it is made for her. He sighs, handing the ring back.

"Okay, this is the one for Vicki," Billy declares. "Box it up."

"Consider it done," and then Henry smiles, clapping him on the shoulder, firmly, "and welcome to the world of monogamous and happy."

Honestly, Billy can say that he's happy – the happiest he's been in a long time.

Somehow, he feels like he's not just floating around, waiting to screw up like everyone expected him to, or says he will. There's a possibility the lawn will be bare and an even bigger possibility that there's a Abbott-Newman throw down in the works but still, he's readily anxious to marry Victoria.

Something like Renewed Purpose creeps up and Billy's heart beats like a jackhammer on steroids.

Forever is an infinite amount of time; that's all.

Billy can pinpoint the moment he stops being In Definite Like with the enemy's daughter an starts to fall, and fall hard, for Vickie: when she beats Billy at Ski-Ball, proceeds to win (read: by the smallest of margins, Billy needs to clarify here) when it comes to Pinball, and spanks him at Donkey Kong. It's the first time Billy really gets to see Victoria's Ice Queen Persona totally evaporate. She laughs with no inhibitions which in turn, makes him laugh because her laughter is so damn contagious.

And then there's that light Victoria gets in her eyes when her smile reaches them.

That will be engraved somewhere in Billy's psyche forever, even with Victoria robs the vending machines and ends up hopped up on cheese doodles and jellybeans.

Billy takes the velvet blue box after paying for the jewelry inside and clasps hands with Henry.

"Thanks, man. That Restless Style ad space is yours."

"No worries. Just go make and honest woman out of Victoria Newman," Henry puts a thoughtful face and chuckles. "And I mean this in all seriousness: may the Force be with you. Her last name is Newman, so you'll need it."

It's not because Victor may or may not remind Billy of Darth Vader at all.

"Thank you," Billy says, silently marveling at how freaking odd Henry is, yet he's a good guy with good intentions and passionate about the family business. Billy finds that admirable. Maybe. "I've got purposing to do but we'll talk."

"For sure – when Morgan and I get back from the Amazon Rainforest in two weeks. Mazel tov, in advance."

Here's what Billy tries to hide after he pulls up into the driveway of their new home (he's not just Billy Abbott, the drunk and the playboy and she's not just Victoria Newman, the ice princess and the control freak. They're simply now, Billy&Victoria): the distant smell of cheap tequila, the way his palms sweat against his steering wheel, the feeling of the velvet box making its presence known and the nerve-wracking idea of maybe becoming a father for the second time, and getting possibly getting married. But the third time is the charm, right?

In an alternate universe, Victoria is the Bonnie Parker to his Clyde Barrow.

Blame it on the old sixties-era movies, Billy and Victoria fall asleep to as the screen fades to black and the end credits roll.

Either way, his life is going to change forever and Billy wants Victoria on the ride with him.

(He hopes she'll say yes.)

Breathe [breeth] — to take air or oxygen into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire.

Billy remembers a time where anaphylaxis almost kills him, or at least, makes him feel like he's dying. It makes him feel like his ten year old life is over. The discovery of his pickle allergy (read: yeah, that's an actual allergy, not just a reason to stop making out with Victoria, even though it's never cool to have his mom bust into his trailer with Nikki right behind) happens at boarding school when he eats a pickle because he's dared to – now, that's just completely stupid. Two hours later, he's itching as his skin breaks out in huge welts (makeitstop) and Billy finds it harder and harder to breathe. He wheezes and the sound the loud New York ambulance sirens fade away, the steady beeping of the monitor getting softer and softer.

"Billy, Billy," the nice ambulance man says, and his vision swims and blurs around the edges, "Billy, I'm going to need you try and stay awake, buddy."

He falls asleep when his eyelids feel like the weight of the world rests on them and Billy can't hold on anymore. His next memory is waking up with a dull pain in his upper thigh from a needle called something antihistamine, and bright lights shining and making his blue eyes hurt. Needles go in his arm and here's the annoying beeping again. His head hurts.

Jill (she's supposed to leave today, like she always does) swims into his vision as it clears up and John just looks relieved that he's okay.

"Mom?"

"Shh, just rest, sweetheart," Jill gently silences him, and kisses his head of sandy blonde hair.

John smiles down at his son, tapping his free hand, "We're just glad you're okay, son."

The next day, Billy remembers feeling a lot better (he's in sososo much trouble when he gets back to school) so Jill leaves for Genoa City, hugging him goodbye so tightly, Billy can't breathe.

He doesn't mind too much.

Billy remembers the two other times in his past where he's still an asshole and sleeps with any girl he wants but still, he's left profoundly breathless: the day he and Mac are supposed to be in their bubble of matrimony, only to be shattered when Billy and Mac go to sleep as husband and wife and wake up first cousins.

The other girl instance etched into his memory is when his daughter, Cordelia, is born on the Abbott Cabin floor. He's scared to hold her because she's so little and fragile. Really, he's scared – period. But Billy holds this baby girl and stares at her, drinking her in. She's beautiful and it's blows his mind that this little person with dark eyes, button nose, cheeks, a mouth that emits little cries and the trademark Abbott chin, according to Jack, has his genes. Or half of them.

The fourth time Billy feels like he can't breathe, he's in genuine awe.

Victoria stands at the end of their walkway, radiating in her white dress as it hugs her in all of the right places. She catches his eye and grins at him like it's the two of them. Billy knows what he gets into, dating a Newman and she knows this Abbott's past: the dirty, sordid details of his failures and shortcomings, but neither cares. Her eyes sparkle as Victoria walks up on Nick's arm and it takes everything in Billy not to meet her halfway and kiss her before Judge Anderson says so.

Nick hands Victoria's hand over to Billy's hand, and they face only each other as if nobody else exists and they slow dance while the world burns around them.

Victoria lightly squeezes his hand (iloveyou), and Billy lightly runs the pads of his thumbs across her knuckles in silently reply (iloveyoutoo) while he tells himself to man the hell up and breathe.

Farewells [fair-wel] — an expression of good wishes at parting.

William Shakespeare once writes in Romeo & Juliet that parting is such sweet sorrow.

Oh, the irony but here's the difference: in hindsight, Romeo Montague isn't stewing in guilt over giving Juliet Capulet the one she wants more than anything only to lose it, and much more.

He's not good with goodbyes.

Billy's painfully aware of that as anger turns to defeat to a degree of self-loathing because once again, even when he tries to do the right thing with the stupidest avenue, it still gets shot to Hell.

He needs to drink, punch somebody, yell at somebody, run somebody over or do all four – he feels he's going out of his mind and his skin is the only thing is keeping him slight sane. Only in Genoa City can a criminal bullshit and lie her way under oath and still get parental rights for a kid she doesn't want—and a kid that is, every that matters, an Abbott and a Newman and is loved.

Maybe he should keep his temper in check but when someone throws all of his mistakes in his face and accuses him of not being a loving father (damn, he's trying and Billy tries being a little more than mortal and a little more awesome when it comes to fatherhood), that's war. That's when battle lines are lost.

Daisy Carter is a blatant psycho, unhinged, and to plainly put it: crazy.

(He knows what crazy looks like: it's in the eyes, just under the surface of her fake lady-like demeanour, but he also knows what heartbreak and the price of hurting Victoria looks like: the sight of a tear making a path down her cheek and breaking of at her chin and a silent explosive boom sound Billy's sure he hears.)

The door slams as Victoria grabs her purse and leaves him with her words hanging into the air, while she's in the middle of packing Lucy's things. Victoria gives up – says that's his optimism is irritating and a person can't go through life with blind optimism. There are no certainties. There are no definite outcomes when it comes to Lucy, and she's done with courts and lawyers.

He's the only guy who can screw up married life three times. The first time, she's his cousin and then she's not, the second time Billy looks ready to run down the altar in the opposite direction, and the third time, he doesn't know anymore. All he knows is that Victoria is hurt and he hates himself right now and Lucy will never be their baby.

In frustration, Billy throws Lucy's favourite flower rattle across the room, making the toy collide with the floor with that rattling sound that makes Lucy smile and laugh, her eyes lighting up.

There's a knock on the door and so help him, if it's Phyllis coming to gloat, he'll pick her up and shove (no, correction: throw) her ass out the window himself.

"Billy, it's me!"

"Rafe, it's open!" Billy calls back and his friend and attorney walks in with a wary look on his face, blended with one of concern.

"I just came to check on you and Victoria."

"She's not here," he says, the emptiness of the house more pronounced. There has to be something—yeah, okay, he's holding onto the edge of cliff with a long way down by the finger tips and the ledge giving way second by second, but this can't be the end. "How fast can you file an appeal for the ruling?"

"I don't know if an appeal can be filed," the lawyer replies, feeling the lines between personal friendship and professionalism blur. "As I said before, a biological mother that fights for her child carries a lot of weight with the jury. Daniel signed his parental rights away and Phyllis as the biological grandmother unfortunately helped her case."

"So, biology outweighs a loving home? Vicki and I are better parents to Lucy, hands down," Billy adds in a quieter tone. "I lost my daughter and I'm pretty sure I've lost my wife."

"I'm sorry," Rafe apologizes, "but you – bought a baby."

So?

He glares while the words and you were an accomplice, asshole almost slip out but Billy musters up enough humility to bite them back and bitterly swallows them.

Even so, there's been a lifetime of having his Mistakes put on display. Now, it stops.

"I'm so sick of people telling me that!" he yells, and yeah – Billy's fucking entitled to go on a tirade right now so forgive him if he's so angry he can't see straight. All he really sees his happy home being ripped to shreds, his marriage on the verge of destruction because of two million dollars and the feeling of a baby in his arms (he falls in love with Lucy fo e). "Yeah, I bought a baby! And yes, I screwed up, but I love that little girl so much," Billy chuckles, bitterly, continuing and not stopping to take a breath, "but no, our legal system says that a psycho gets rights to an innocent baby? I never held anyone captive against their will, and I never attempted to murder two innocent people. You went to law school so please tell me how the hell my one mistake is so much bigger than Daisy Carter's rap sheet?"

Rafe sighs, remembering the sleepless night he faces because of this case – newsflash: he's a lawyer and Human – and right now, feeling like he's let his friend down.

It's times like this where he realizes that his own law firm and a pretty little law degree means squat.

"I don't know, Billy."

"There's nothing we can possibly do here?"

"I admire your optimism," his friend says. No, this is desperation – not optimism, not hopefulness. This is desperation and a whole lot of fear, "I'm sorry. I'll keep looking into it, and find loopholes but right now, there's nothing that can be done unless you want Lucy back in the foster care system."

Billy shakes his head, "No, she's been through that already. Don't wanna traumatize her."

Rafe picks up his briefcase and glances at his watch, "I've got somewhere I've got to be, but I'll call you later."

"Yeah, man. Thanks."

Rafe leaves, door closing behind and Billy glances at the picture of him, Victoria and Lucy.

He crosses over to the front of the house and picks it up.

Yesterday, he sings a really off-key rendition of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles to get Lucy successfully to bed as she falls sound asleep in his arms (she likes to be carried like a football), and now in the span of twenty-four hours, Victoria's gone and they're left with an empty nursery, once again, with no child to occupy it.

"You're…leaving?"

There's a pause too long, a look too lingering. So much for beating the Abbott-Newman curse.

"Yeah."

"Where are you going to stay, hmm?"

"I don't know – the Club, Jack's? Does it even matter?"

"No," Victoria replies, and Billy can practically see the protective walls going up because he's doing it too, one of the short list mutual flaws they actually have in common. She looks at the bags at the door and then at him, tears welling up in her eyes. "It doesn't," she sniffles, and slightly glares, "I guess not."

"So, I'm just going to leave and stay the hell out of your way."

"How chivalrous of you."

"I, uh, have more things in the closets so I'll come by for that stuff later," Billy tells her as matter-of-factly as possible and failing, and then stops himself and to say how sorry he is, how he only sees how depressed she gets after the loss of a baby they aren't expecting but both want, how he gets Lucy to make her happy and how he knows they'll never really be the same after this but he's hoping to God, there's a chance for them. He's not the guy she meets last year: the drunken asshole, he's better than that now. Billy wants to tell her that too. "Vickie, I—" Billy starts and stops. It all sounds better and not so stupid in his head. Gripping the doorknob of his car, he simply says, "I'm going."

His blue eyes lock with hers, and every cell, every bone in Billy's body wants to wipe Victoria's tears away with the pads of his thumbs and kiss those deep red, full lips, like back in the beginning.

"Okay."

"Okay, uh, bye."

Billy walks out of this happy house he creates with his belongings in tow, and drives right back to Rock Bottom – back to Square One.

(His trailer smells like Failure.)

Sometimes, Billy thinks that with age, the art of goodbyes and farewell can be perfected.

They get easier and the older one is, the more emotionally distant one can get and simply not give a shit after time.

He does it with Jill as a child. He does it with Mackenzie. He does it with Lily because he lies to her. He can't fully do it after John's death. He finally does it after Colleen's death but visits her grave once a month.

But not with Victoria – he'll never perfect with goodbyes and farewells with her.

And saying goodbye to Lucy – Billy doesn't know how he'll be able to erase his memories of this amazing little baby girl who seems like an old soul for six months old.

(It hurts more and more with time.)

Unknown [uhn-nohn] — not known; strange or familiar.

How did we get here?

We used to know each other so well, Billy.

Victoria thinks her marriage to Billy is supposed to be forever, not a little over ten months as it starts to crack on a seemingly perfect surface. She doesn't know anymore where the man that she falls in love with and against everything Sane and Rational.

Here's something that makes Victoria sad amidst her anger and disgust with Billy and she works hard to push the word divorce as far from her mind as possible: Billy, her husband, is still down there, deep down behind the man rough around the edges with the faint musk of tequila and sadly, more than cold jail bars separating them.

Victoria hates this, the unknown, not being in control, the utter helplessness and a little bit of desperation.

She testifies on her husband's behalf so he can keep Delia in his life (she knows that pain all too well, baby) and then there's the second woman right after she's subjected to more of Adam's Ivy League, Harvard Business Graduate Bullshit. Obviously, her day can and does get progressively worse. She's a blonde, so at least, Billy is consistent – this whore or this hooker with her husband, with her tacky clothes and cheap make-up. Victoria remembers getting angry, tempted to slap Billy through the jail bars as he tries to explain and tries to make this better. The stab of jealousy at the idea of another woman with her husband surprises her, blended in with her anger and disgust for Billy.

You still love him, her heart says, even with all of his flaws, Victoria. Your jealousy stems from love.

But, her head replies with more vigor, he shouldn't have to make you feel this way.

You love him, her heart replies simply, sounding truer.

Her head and logic fight back, But sometimes, sweetheart, love isn't enough.

"I don't care. Everyone else can believe what I did or didn't do, but not you," and then he almost begs her like a prayer that doesn't reach too far to God so ends up in her lap instead. "I swear on my father's soul, I didn't do this. You have to believe me."

She swallows, throat thick. Every fiber of her being just wants to interlock hands through the jail bars. But Victoria barely manages to fight it. She can't bear it because Billy still, even after all this, makes her melt and weak in the knees like the feeling of a first crush.

Victoria looks at her husband with tear rimmed eyes.

"I believe you."

Not many people know that Billy has a tell when he lies because a) he's so good at it with that charm and his gift of Gab and b) it's so small and discreet that if Victoria doesn't look at him hard enough, she'll miss it: the way his ears slightly redden and then a well-timed joke to cover it up.

Today, there's no reddish tint to her husband's ears and since when having a marriage on the rocks even remotely funny?

It's an internal tug-of-war as Victoria feels her world tilt so she sighs, resolutely to go back to Newman from the police station and look over the notes for the next board meeting before going into a perpetually empty house. Her legs feel like the strength goes out of them. The dull ache in Victoria's chest spreads and she wills herself to hold her head high, blinks her tears back as they build and manage to quietly escape.

Victoria quickly whips it away, goes against her pride (it's in her Newman blood) and glances back to the jail cells and then walks away, wondering how she and Billy got to this point, really.

Jim and Margaret don't struggle this hard.

"This isn't television," Victoria hears herself murmur like a prayer, a mantra. "This isn't television."

Sometimes, she wishes it is.

(Ignorance is bliss. And bliss is the most beautiful feeling in the world. She misses it.)

Those pleading, blue eyes alight with something like conviction are burned in Victoria's psyche. He begs, pleads, protests that he's innocent ("I know I've hurt you and done some shitty things but not this. You've got to believe me, Victoria. I swear, I never touched that girl. I never hired a hooker.") that he loves her too much to do that, and loves Delia too much to sabotage his chances of keeping her in his life. If only words like arrested and solicitation and hooker don't sound so pronounced and present.

Maybe, just maybe, Victoria can go back to the way she feels about him – the way he smiles at her when it makes her melt against her will, the way his five o-clock shadow feels prickly underneath her fingertips when Victoria caresses his cheek after making love, the way Billy can make her laugh with no effort at all, the way he is with Reed, Delia and Lucy –

No, Victoria won't go there.

She gets in her car and drives with whitened knuckles gripping the steering wheel to Newman Enterprises, only to meet an empty parking lot.

This is familiar. This is known to her.

It's where Victoria starts at the mailroom and works her way to the ladder, all the way to currently being a board member and COO of Newman Enterprises.

She dials Brian again when it becomes too quiet in the office and too loud in her head.

"Yeah, hi Brian – Victoria Newman again," she gives a chuckle without it meaning anything. "Once again, me calling at an ungodly hour seems to be a habit but I was just flipping through the board notes for next week and realized I needed the information about the Chinese collaboration—the offer," she sighs, deeply and heavily, heart beating against her sternum. "If you could e-mail that to me, I'd appreciate it so much."

Brian sounds obligatory over the phone, "Currently being sent as we speak."

She hears a beeping on her open laptop, signifying a new e-mail.

"Oh, I got it. Thanks a lot."

"No problem, but don't you think you should call it a night?"

Victoria doesn't know what home is, where it's strange and unfamiliar to her now.

"I will," she lies, cleverly, "as soon I'm sure I have these board notes down. I want to be prepared."

Brian wants to say something – Victoria knows it in the ten years she's known him – but he holds his tongue and doesn't say anything, "That's your prerogative. I know that Newman work ethic is the craziest I've ever seen in the ten years I've worked for your father, and I guess now, that Newman's publicly owned we need it, but you're human," he says, and for some reason, tears spring to her eyes and a catch in her throat develops, "not a machine. Have a good night and take it easy, will you?"

"Thank you for your concern, Brian. I'll go home as soon this is done."

"Goodnight."

And then she hangs up and tries to drown out her inner turmoil with the sound of keystrokes and daydreams of Billy.

Newman Enterprises is like coming home – the halls are familiar, slow, generic elevator music playing in her head long after she leaves the office, the halls and its patterns second nature to Victoria as her heeled feet carry where to wherever business dealings and acquisition take place. The sense of familiarity is right here, in her office with the towering plants by the door. The carpet is a dark shade of grey (notquiteblack) with the dark mahogany brown desk complete with organized drawers and a comfortable black chair.

While Victoria is at Newman Enterprises finally leaving and closing the lights with a soft click, here's something that's not known to her: somewhere between Interstate 45 (where Jimmy's is, she recalls that) and Billy's trailer, tires screech against the friction of the dark pavement of a highway, there's the sound of metal bending with the ease of pretzel and her husband gravely hurt underneath a totaled, expensive car.

She doesn't know that there are splotches of smears of deep red sticky blood, and it's literally hurts for Billy to breathe before he gives up trying and everything goes black.

No, she doesn't know that Billy manages to wheeze out a barely audible Victoria as if someone, anyone will hear.

Here's another fact that's completely unknown fact: her name is on Billy's lips and her face is the last face in his mind's eyes before he totally loses consciousness.

Victoria falls asleep on the mustard yellow Father Knows Best couch with the framed photo of them on their wedding day on that sunny day in September, papers and files about the Jabot Launch and Beauty of Nature's response to it. She flips through it until she can't think about it anymore and Victoria yawns and decides to sleep, trying to get rid of the sudden onset of a bad feeling that settles deep in her stomach and doesn't go away.

She knows from first-hand experience that it's possible to shed tears while sleep, while not being consciously aware.

At twelve fourteen in the morning, she gets the call from Jack.

"Hello, Jack?"

"Victoria," he sighs, and she can hear the tremors deep in her brother-in-law's voice, "uh, something happened tonight. It's Billy."

She sits up a little straighter, heart racing and beating so hard, it makes her chest constrict, "What happened?" she questions, evenly and failing marginally. Her hand trembles. "Is it serious?"

"Yeah, it's bad," Jack answers, gravely. "Billy was in an accident tonight – and before you ask, his blood alcohol was clean – but the doctors say it's quite serious. They bought him in and the doctors were already working on him. He went through full cardiac arrest, Victoria."

Bringing a trembling hand to her mouth, she whispers, "Oh my God. They managed to stabilize him, right?"

"Yes, but it's not looking too good." Jack says, and sighs. "Just get here as soon as possible—"

"I'm on my way. Thank you, Jack," and Victoria hangs up before Jack can say goodbye.

Somewhere, in her disarray, and her disdain for Chloe for taking the one bright spot in Billy's life away, she dials Chloe because she's the mother of his child.

Victoria calls Chloe for Delia's sake.

And at twelve twenty-five in the morning, Victoria manages to slip on shoes, a loose sweater over her, grabs her car keys and drives to Genoa City Memorial with the uncertainty of whether she'll be a widow or not. Victoria can't think of what'll happen if she loses her love (she loves Billy still and she still dreams of him with a fifties style sweater vest all over again and she doesn't want to think of how Delia will be heartbroken to lose her daddy a second time over).

"Oh, Billy, what have you done?" she whispers, eyes plastered ahead to the road ahead of hers. "Please, hold on."

It's the uncertainty and the unknown about Billy's condition that makes Victoria's heart race.

(Baby, please don't go.)

Box [boks] — a container, case, or receptacle, usually rectangular, of wood, metal, cardboard, etc., and often with a lid or removable cover.

When Victoria is ten and Nicholas is seven, she remembers watching her very first instance of visual freedom. The air is crisp and the leaves go from the bright and vibrant shades of green to the leaves turning into the reds, oranges and yellows of fall.

She watches the ranch hands let the horses run free from the protective wooden fence. As a smile touches her lips, Victoria's eyes light up when Clementine gallops, the sound of her hooves colliding with the earth. Her mane is blown back by the wind as it's in her face and snout.

It's the first time Victoria is absolutely so transfixed by the sight that she doesn't hear the sound of her father's steps coming behind her.

"Sweetheart, it's chilly here."

"I know, Daddy," Victoria answers, turning around to smile at her father for a minute and then turns away again to watch Clementine – the present she gets a year before – in the wide expanse as her arms lean against the wooden fencing.

Placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder, Victor looks at what Victoria is watching – her horse, Clementine running freely and grazing – before taking in the sight for himself.

"Daddy, Clementine's happy – even more today."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because," she glances at her father with a smile that reaches her eyes, as they lock with Victor's, "she didn't like being in the stables. She's happy because she's free."

Little does Victoria know that she would grow to crave to set herself free from the Imaginary Box that is associated with having the Newman blood in her veins and carrying under the pressure of carrying the Newman name on her shoulders.

She never expects Billy, of all people, to help her forge that path.

There's a burden that comes with being a Newman – a child of Victor Newman. There is the ever-persistent pressure of always trying to reach Victor's unattainable, impossible expectations. There is a certain burden to carry when intertwined and entangled with the name Newman.

Expectations have to be met, and there are standards to be upheld.

For the first time since the age of sixteen, Victoria doesn't feel that pressure.

(She's as happy and as free as Clementine.)

Victoria can't help but notice how incredibly sexy Billy looks, while he labels cardboard boxes with a black Sharpie to take to their new home together.

Trading the Victor Newman box, Victoria is so ready to an independent life with Billy by her side.

Mask [mahsk] — a covering for all or part of the face, worn to conceal one's identity.

For Victoria Newman, it's not a good day.

One day, JT and her are behaving amicably enough to think that it's not time for a separation and they can't possibly be divorcing after everything they go through.

And then next, Victoria finds herself arguing with JT and being annoyed with everything he says and does – almost like he intentionally wants to crack her civil surface and get under her defensive skin in the worst way possible.

She masks her frustration at marital bliss gone wrong by working as hard as she possibly can at Newman.

Victoria loves the acquisitions, the closing of deals and the way companies and businesses can rise and fall with a single merger or the stroke of a pen against a binding contract. Victoria takes her silent rage and frustration out on the smooth keys of her laptop with the deft movements her fingers can make – there has to be something done about the Japanese keeping Beauty of Nature on their shelves and in their boisterous market.

Beauty of Nature doesn't call her a bad mother, calls the Newman family the worst, possible influence for their son ("Reed's a Newman too, whether you like it or not. And he'll resent you for keeping him away, JT.") – it's the most hurtful thing JT says to her, as the words cut her to where it hurts to the most, before an apologetic look comes on his face. But it's too late; Victoria grabs her keys and purse, letting the door slam behind her and chokes back a sob, refusing to let JT or anyone else see her cry. Beauty of Nature doesn't leave her. Beauty of Nature doesn't go back on their promise of loving her forever.

So, here at Crimson Lights, Victoria sighs resolutely and works on this report she needs for the Newman meeting next week because now, business is the only thing that doesn't change.

Victoria won't even look up when through her peripheral vision, she sees Billy Abbott purposely making a beeline for her table.

She works just as hard to mask the fact that she thinks he's looking incredibly handsome, especially today of all days.

If God, The Devil, or a paradoxical combination of two, think this is a joke, it's not funny.

(Maybe, it's the hand of Fate – but Victoria's too much of a realist to believe that.)

"You're going to the Masquerade Policeman Ball Shindig Thing with me tonight."

"Excuse me?"

Billy repeats, smirking, "I said, you're going to the Masquerade thing tonight. With me."

"Billy, go away before you make my day worse," she says, off-handedly. Victoria stops typing to lift her annoyed gaze through her eyelashes long before to realize that he's pulling up a chair and oh dear God, he's sitting down. In retrospect, it doesn't surprise her, but Victoria's just not in the damn mood. "Please."

He leans over across the table and closes her laptop cover down before Victoria can put another sentence and annoyance surges though her. She just wishes people can leave her alone to do what she does best – and that's work. It's the only constant in her life now. Her marriage stops being happy and Reed can have two houses any day now. Nothing's ever guarantee.

Victoria glares, sighing angrily while he rests more comfortably in the chair across from her.

"I was working on that."

"And, you, my dear, are fun-deprived."

"You're an ass – an unbelievable ass. You know that, right?"

And then Billy says the most outright, offensive thing to her, and Victoria will not mask how ridiculous Billy Abbott is right now.

Partly because, she's too busy berating and cursing herself for allowing Billy to make her blush.

"That's not what you were saying when we had sex three days ago," he says, lowering his voice as her eyes widen with contempt and damn, he's so irritatingly. "Something like the lines of," Billy mimics her, or attempts to, with a higher pitched voice, "'oh, God yes, yes, yes! Don't stop!'"

Victoria can't even begin to – breathe deeply, breathe slowly.

"Fine," Victoria relents, rolling her eyes, "if you stop being your annoying self, I'll consider it."

It's not like she has anything better to do anyway.

Of course, there's the Sex, the sex between two Consenting adults who are very much aware: the way Billy makes her melt in his strong arms, the way he kisses her so deeply and so passionately she's almost forgets to breathe, the way her body melds against his perfectly (kissmekissmekissme), the way Billy makes her moan with Victoria even realizing it as he presses feather light kisses to the shallow space around her collarbone and smiles, whispering sweet nothings against her skin.

There's that. And Victoria must grudgingly admit it's incredibly hard to mask a racing pulse and a heart that skips more than one beat at a time.

This is the exact moment Victoria feels the Abbott-Newman battles drawn in the sand blur.

She's not stupid enough to breach them always, but can for one night as Victoria agrees to go to the masquerade-themed Policeman Ball and at least, casually bump into each other there.

Victoria sighs, looks at him with disdain.

Billy merely flashes that signature grin of his at her.

Here's something that makes Victoria can't mask: the laughter that escapes her when Billy shows up for a second time with a mask that reminds her of her dad and the feeling of zero gravity and weightlessness when he twirls her on the dance floor and her dark red dress billows all around her.

She can't mask this kind of happiness with Billy – not tonight.

Talent [tal-uhnt] — a special natural ability or aptitude.

She understands what Billy does for a living, but she also has a condition: that as talented as Billy is with Restless Style he is, the Newman Chronicles have to end. Or else, he shouldn't call it Restless Style at all to begin with.

Victoria hates this; this continuous feeling of loss that never goes away, the way Nick barges into her house and blames her for what Billy does for a living, and frankly the way her sibling starts to look like their father, judgmental looks and speeches that make Victoria feel incredibly stupid.

If Nick knows her at all, he should have the common sense to know that she's never okay with her family being hurt and in trouble. Nick should know that she loves Noah and Faith very much, as if they were her own.

She grabs the new issue of Restless Style, the cover complete with cartoon versions of Sharon tied to train tracks while Adam brandishes to either set her free or destroy her like the Scum of The Earth, Victoria knows her half-brother is. Victoria's eyes scan the article briefly before wading into the mud that is this issue of Restless Style. Seeing the By Phyllis Newman tagline, she knows another literary hatchet job is inevitable.

And Billy green lights it – that leaves a bitter taste in Victoria's mouth. Then again, she should know.

All of the witty wordplay (only Phyllis can wield her keyboard like an actual sword) in the world can't sugar-coat this: Sharon, as the Perpetual Damsel shadows and becoming the woman who is portrayed as the Jilted Lover, who intentionally go to Hawaii to seek out her boyfriend's wife and kill her.

Victoria knows Sharon all these years and as stupid as she is for allowing Adam to breathe the same air as her, she's not the killer type.

Which is why, Victoria is going to let Billy have it, and then rip this magazine to confetti.

"Seriously, I thought you'd cut the Newman crap when we got married," Victoria states, fighting old habits that would cause her to snap at him and metaphorically rip his head off. Instead, she takes the magazine and throws it on the table.

Maybe it'll explode.

"Oh! Vickie, would you calm down?"

"Sure, as soon as I listen to whatever harebrained reason you've got this time," she shoots back, and then breathes deeply, softening her tone. "My brother just came over here and yelled at me. I defended you to him – told him that you were my husband and that he was becoming like our father more and more," she glances at the floor, remnants of anger still there but getting harder and harder to hold on to. Now, it's just disappointment. "Billy, I'm running out of family to lose here: my father, my son, our baby and now, my brother. I can't take anymore."

Billy sighs, goes past her, and Victoria watches her husband goes into his work bag, pull out his laptop and dangle it over the opening of a trash can.

"Say the word, and Restless Style is dead."

Victoria blinks, unable to find her words for a split second, "You're saying that if I tell you to, you'll resign from Restless Style?"

"Kill the whole operation."

"Seriously?"

"Yep," he answers, shortly. "Tell me and everything's dead."

This is where Victoria ignores one of Billy's talents: the way he loves her unconditionally and she feels quite stupid for flying off the handle.

"Wait, wait," Victoria says, resigning and all traces of her anger and disappointment melting away until they are replaced with love for this man that loves her. "Don't do it."

Of course, Billy never takes a straight path but Restless Style is something Billy is legitimately good at – and he works hard at it.

"Baby, I'll muck out toilets if you want me to," he offers and then begs with nervous laughter. "Please, tell me you don't want me to."

"You're good at Restless Style," Victoria says, putting her arms around his neck, "and it's something that fulfills you. You're talented, Billy," and then she whispers the words that are always there, but hard to say. They're always been hard. Billy makes her trust him. Victoria gazes into his eyes deeply, those eyes that are hard to forget and whispers, "I love you."

Billy smiles, and she barely catches the look of surprise that dawns on his face, before he answers, "I love you, too."

And then he kisses her like he always does, and Victoria hugs him like she never wants to let him go.

Victoria is proud and lucky to have such a talented – and yes, Billy's talents don't remain at Restless Style and work – charming, sexy husband that's all hers.

Hurricane [hur-i-keyn] — a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic, having wind speeds of or in excess of 72 miles per hour or 35 miles per second.

"Thank you so much for meeting me on short notice, Caroline."

"Hey, that's my job," Caroline flashes Victoria a sympathetic smile. "I heard about your husband's accident—thank God he's okay."

Victoria, for his sake, is glad he's okay.

(And she can't handle completely shattering if Billy ever dies and words are left unsaid.)

"Yeah, I'm glad he's okay," she replies, automatically so Victoria doesn't cry. Laughter sounds so foreign to her now. She sighs, locking eyes with Caroline, "but yet, I'm conflicted. I'm at my breaking point and I don't know if I can love my husband enough to watch him spiral out of control."

Caroline nods, listening intently as her patient is honest and frank with her.

"—and I'm conflicted," Victoria admits with a sigh and hankering for chai tea right about now. "Divorce has crossed my mind, I won't lie to you, but then," she pauses, a faint smile touching her lips and her tired eyes light up, "I see glimpses of the man I married and I think it would be stupid of me to let something this great go. We've both hurt each other so much."

"Ah, Billy Shakespeare did say true love was destined to be rough from the start," she muses and then asks, "Why do you feel like you've hurt each other?"

"Because he lied about Lucy—about how we got her, about who's child she was, making me hold her when I told him my heart couldn't handle loving another baby if it was going to be taken away—and I hurt him because I told him after Lucy was eventually taken away from us that his mistake killed our future together, that he killed all of the dreams we ever had. Basically, my last words to him were 'You broke everything' before I stormed out. And," she admits, shamefully and full of self-blame, "I was too hurt and angry with him to ask him to stay. My own pride had a hand. Now, he's spiraling and reckless and I can't help but blame myself. But at the same time, I need to shield myself. I can't watch him self-destruct without breaking down because it hurts so much, Caroline. I can't carry this."

"I believe," Caroline says, during the impromptu session at Crimson Lights, "in two things: one, in the power of journaling and two, in communication. Victoria, if you're torn and feeling conflicted, let Billy know that," the therapist advises. "Let him know where you stand. Let him know how you feel. Get inner communication with yourself, and communication with Billy. That's all you can do from there and see where that takes you. If you still care enough for him."

"I do," Victoria says, softly more to herself than Caroline.

God, she does. Victoria still loves Billy and she wants to turn it off for fear of getting hurt but her heart is permanently in the on position when it comes to the beautiful disaster that is, Billy Abbott.

But here's the thing, Victoria knows all along deep down without the help of a psychologist: Billy's her perfect storm.

When Billy and I crossed paths for the very first time, he was in a jail cell.

The second time, it was at his Halloween party at which slapped him for making my life complicated to the point of no return. The next time, it was totally accidental. He was drunk, sitting on a curb in the biting winter cold. And it was New Years. I couldn't stand him when he was sober, much less so drunk he couldn't see straight but even I knew that Billy, alcohol and below freezing temperatures were not the best of friends – not even acquaintances. So, I had to get him home. Common sense took over general dislike.

It ended with me unexpectedly laughing over his NAUGHTY boxers and my missing red scarf.

The first time he kissed me, I slapped him—slapped because as soon his lips touch mine. Something happened to me, like a switch went off in my head and I felt as if I had been electrified.

The second time, we kissed on his sister's doorstep in February weather and I found myself, repulsed by him still and at the time, so intrigued by him.

And the third time, I kissed him with no hesitation, no reservations and really, no regrets.

How could someone want to be away from someone yet want to be with them at the same time?

Logically, you can't. It's one way or another. Yet, with Billy he defied all logic and I kind of liked that.

She goes upstairs from peeling her eyes away from long calculations and spreadsheets to check on Reed. Victoria starts up the stairs, past the master bedroom, a little past the nursery Victoria can't bring herself to disassemble, while Delia's empty Pink & Sparkly Room as she likes to call it, is right across and Reed's room right next to Delia's.

She raps her knuckles against the bright red door – Victoria remembers painting that door with her little boy – before twisting the doorknob and pushing the slightly ajar door a little wider. Reed's little blond head is poured over crayons all over his desk as he colours and draws just like her. His eyebrows furrow together and his usually bright eyes are focused in deep concentration over his drawing.

"Hey, baby," Victoria greets with a smile. She walks in, kisses her baby boy's blonde head and then glances at the drawing: a crayon-drawn memory of when Billy takes Reed to the Children's Museum and then that time when Billy spends a really windy Saturday, teaching Reed to fly a kite in the park. "Oh, that's a great picture."

She remembers because at the same time, Victoria joins Delia, Pinkerton, and Jessica the Ragdoll for an enjoyable Imaginary Tea Party. They drink invisible tea out of pink teacups and eat very real cookies.

Written in crayon in loopy five year old handwriting is, Happy Birthday, Billy. Love, Reed.

Reed looks at her, eyes shining proudly, "It's my present for Billy. It's his birthday today. Do you think he'll like it?"

She sighs, heart aching a little more, and Billy's birthday isn't supposed to be this way this year.

Victoria crouches down to her son's level and opens her arms. Understanding, Reed goes into them and she holds her son tight and whispers against the side of his head.

"Yeah," Victoria quietly sniffles, and plasters a smile. "He'll love it. It's a beautiful piece."

Sometimes, I dream of Lucy.

It's the same dream: one where she's crying for me and there's some kind of glass-like force between us that won't break. I scream as loud as I can and pound this force field with my fists until they're raw and they throb against the glass. The more she wails for me and the more she needs me, the more my heart aches for her.

And then when I wake up all alone after crying out for the husband that caused this and I truly feel alone in this wide, cold bed.

My head has accepted that she'll grown up, happy and oblivious to the first six months that she was here and was true to her name: a light with a smile that melts my heart and the most beautiful, vibrant laugh ever heard. Logically, I know that Lucy will call somebody Mommy but it won't be me.

I had Lucy's favorite toys and possessions boxed up and sent to Phyllis' partly because a) Lucy is Phyllis' granddaughter and b) I was afraid of the depths of the anger I had and it surprised me. Would I slap her? Would I throttle her? Would I just skip the unnecessary pleasantries and punch her with a right hook I never knew I was capable of? Who knew? Maybe. Or not.

The rest, I donated and gave away.

But in my heart, in my own sense of hindsight, I guess I knew Lucy was never mine to begin to with.

It's like a hurricane hit and my marriage and losing Lucy is the carnage that remains in its wake.

(I miss laughing. I miss happiness. I miss security. And most of all, I miss Billy.)

Victoria doesn't know what hurts more: the fact that she has to hear about Billy selling Restless Style from Adam, the brother she absolutely loathes or the brother she thinks has her back taking advantage of a painful time for her all around. On top of that, Nick re-hires the woman who single-handedly orchestrates the whole disgusting thing. After all, Phyllis is the reason a criminal actually has parental rights.

Finally, Victoria decides the latter: the knife is already in Victoria's back.

All Nick does is help Phyllis turn it.

It's a summer day today that has grey cloud moving head, ready to rain.

The highlight of my day was going back to the trailer to find some kind of glimpse of the man I married – not this one.

His wedding band sat in a half drunken glass of whiskey. I didn't know how to feel – whether I should scream and yell at him, try to talk some sense into him to no avail. Crying immediately registered in my head but it feels like I'd run out of tears at this moment.

I feel like if I think too long and too hard, I'll crack. So, I won't. I won't even fracture. If I do, I will completely shatter and I won't be able to pick up the pieces on my own. Or ever.

After all, I've shattered before and cracked and the pieces were too sharp and jagged.

Anyone who knows me knows I'd rather keep my heart locked up tight, my defenses high and my feelings impenetrable where it's hard to get, hard to access. Maybe going back to work for my father at Newman is a knee jerk reaction to trust issues I've always had. And maybe, it's my need to occupy my thoughts with other things that doesn't remind me of Billy.

Yet I fail every time, I muse to myself as the blue-white shock of lightning illuminates my window and it starts to rain.

She glances at one of the framed photos on the night table on Billy's side of the king sized bed.

Victoria remembers when they spoon and when she would playfully encircle her arms around his neck from behind. Her brown tresses fall out of place as she presses a kiss to his stubbly cheek in the morning.

The photo of them is taken at the wedding of Billy's friend, Henry to his girlfriend, Morgan in mid-November. The day is really crazy and somehow, she's forced to make friends with Morgan and be thrown into wedding as a bridesmaid, due to a miscount – Billy's already a groomsman.

Victoria smiles sadly at the photo because of the way Billy loops an arm around her waist and she's pressing a playful kiss to his cheek as he carries her in his arms. Billy grins at the camera, like happiness and love captured and paused forever.

The mauve and dark purple dress pokes itself out from the closet, encased in the plastic wrapping.

She dances to eighties pop music (read: Victoria can get used to a little MC Hammer and the semi-intoxicated groom doing the Worm on the dance floor) with Billy, sips expensive champagne out of crystal champagne flutes until her reservations melt away and laughs until she can't breathe in the Floating, Free Falling Without A Parachute kind of way.

Victoria may or may not be drunk. She's having too much fun to tell.

She feels the sensation of his lips dancing lightly at the tip of her ear, body indulged in a full tingle.

"I think your friend's a little drunk," Victoria observes, with a giggle.

Billy pulls her in a little tighter, makes her feel a little safe. "Mhm – half on bubbly, half on happiness," he whispers in her ear and Victoria can still remember the gooseflesh and the shiver that travels up her spine. "I'm imagining you naked right now."

Victoria turns around in his arms so she faces him, and seductively whispers back, "Me too."

(She doesn't forget the hurricane of emotions that flood his face – surpriseamusementcuriosity and it's one of the best nights of her life.)

I like order.

I like organization.

I'm meticulous and love predictability because it's safe. Routines that are repetitive and constant make me feel in control, and then I don't feel anxious because there's a shift in plans.

And then came Billy: a storm of charm, wit and beautiful blue eyes I fell for, a well-hidden sensitivity I knew was there, an amazing Daddy that made his daughter feel special and my son adore him to pieces. Call him anything you wanted, but Billy had this natural ability with children that made them love him and trust him. He's an amazing father and step-father. Maybe because he was sometimes a big kid too – he's still a big kid in an adult's body sometimes – who was a slob to my extreme cleanliness. We argued, we bantered, we bickered and god, did he ever annoy me.

But he showed me that it was okay to sit on the floor cross legged and stuff my face myself with ice-cream until I experienced a brain freeze and burped up mint chocolate chip ice-cream. I could laugh and waste the day watching Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver until my brain melted to tapioca and Billy's company was all I ever wanted or needed. His company was all that mattered.

Even right now, as I try to understand what happened, somewhere between the gambling, horse-racing part of the newspaper, the cans of beer and whiskey bottles that lay strewn all over his trailer, Billy has the pieces of my heart. It's a shallow statement and something out of the music of a boy band but true. The pieces lay there and I shouldn't care – Abby says "Forget You" is the best remedy for broken hearts – and yet, I do. Forgetting a guy like Billy Abbot is almost impossible. Not matter how much I may try, I can't do.

Caroline says that it's because my sub-consciousness may not want to.

I wish Billy would stop pushing me away.

Then again, I've done my share of pushing away and shutting down.

I look at the tattoo on my lower back with his name on it that lasts forever and realize that Billy made me realize I could control my own life and that included my body as well.

Billy Abbott is this force that didn't wait to be let into my heart, but instead he blew through my ordered and organized psyche and my way of life as it became even became disjointed and disorganized – like I had to make my own discoveries and sift through everything I knew; everything factual all over again. Some discoveries were new (note: I killed Billy in beer pong and I'm quite good at it), some were surprising and quite funny (the only neat thing about Billy was that his boxer drawer was organized by holiday and colour)

He moved like a hurricane and wormed his way into the softest, most vulnerable part of my heart and never left no matter how much I didn't wanted him to say; I did. I still do because I love him so much.

Billy got under my skin and then in my heart, and he never left.

(But here's the question, is love really enough? Or am I being way too naïve for my own good? That's the question that keeps me loving and resenting Billy at the same time.)

Victoria watches her marriage disintegrate gradually and the man she loves hits Rock Bottom. But something deep down says she can hold on to the carnage and salvage it.

The hurricane of losing Lucy, Billy moving out and watching him self-destruct is powerful and the winds suffocate her so much she can't breathe and when she does, she cries because Victoria bears it alone when there's no one to visit and everything reminds her of him. She sobs for the devastation, for the outcome and for the dreams thought up in this house being so impossibly out of reach, possibly even cracked and fragmented.

But she's holding on by the tips of her fingers now, praying to herself that she doesn't let go.

"Please, don't give up on me," she still hears Billy's voice in her head over and over, like a broken old time record player. "Please, don't give up on me."

(Hang in there, baby.)

Laugh [laf] — to express mirth, pleasure, derision, or nervousness with an audible, vocal expulsion of air from the lungs that can range from a loud burst of sound to a series of quiet chuckles and is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and bodily movements.

When Billy is a child and his curiosity mixed with an overly active imagination gets the best of him, he thinks that John's ring is legitimately magic – that the ring makes John the Ultimate Dad, gives him superpowers, and an air about him that mere mortals like Billy can't even begin to understand.

He chuckles to himself, the nice day opposite his mood, because yeah, his inner kid (he's six years old, appreciates a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich and maybe, yanking the ponytail of a girl he likes) still that the ring is magic. But Billy's a year older, a year feeling crappier than ever, and believes that Dad's ring isn't magic. John is a magical man and the greatest person father and human being ever – even with all of his flaws and mistakes, Billy know that.

Jack should have it because he's the oldest son, and wants to be just like Dad, right down to running the family company the way it should be.

And Ashley, well, she likes to see the good in everyone even someone like him.

Here's what Billy Abbott learns on his birthday, Bloody Mary leaving a bitter aftertaste on his tongue and he's not surprised at Victoria's generic birthday wish with his shoulder killing him: there's no such thing as magic and he's no John Abbott—not even a little bit.

"Jack should have this."

"Billy, you're a good man. It doesn't matter what the courts, or what Chloe says. You're a good person and a good father."

"And," Jack chimes in, amidst his excitement over the Jabot Launch and sales numbers with quarterly projections – a whole bunch of business crap Billy really doesn't care about, despite Tucker and Ashley telling him no business talk is allowed, "if Dad were here, he'd want you to have his ring. He'd agree with us. It'll get better."

He sighs, slips his father's ring on the other ring finger, and feeling genuinely touched, Billy mutters a thank you, praying that they take it as it is.

John's ring glints back at him, and Billy sighs.

(Billy still hopes for a new set of car keys. And maybe, custody of his daughter and his marriage too, but that's a hell of a stretch.)

"Okay, guys, this is great. But I'm gonna go."

Ashley replies with a smile, sitting happily on Tucker's lap, "But it's your favourite cake."

If Billy doesn't love his sister, he almost envies her because at least one Abbott (note: two, when Traci and Steve are in the game) is doing great in the marriage department. He plasters on a smile the best he can under the circumstances, and declines the cake. Sugar makes his body feel like complete shit so he doesn't have it all in one sitting. Whiskey, on the hand, makes him numb so he never has to feel, or think, or even breathe for a little while.

"Yeah," Billy answers, "and I appreciate this. But I'm going to head out."

"I'll drive you home," Jack offers. At least, it's sort of a break from Jill's hovering.

"No, that's okay. It's such a beautiful day. I think I'm going to walk home."

Jack looks at him like he's fragile – yeah, a little banged up and a shoulder that kills, but not dead. Even two cardiac arrests in Billy's lifetime don't do him in, so Jack and Ashley should really stop worrying.

"Can you handle that?"

"Yeah, I've been cooped up in a hospital room, and I need the exercise."

Billy doesn't remember much when he comes to – just doctors and nurses telling things like being lucky to be alive and cardiac arrest and nearly dying and things about someone watching over him.

Pain seems to be a constant, and it's everywhere.

Guess death chewed me up and spit me out, Billy muses and would chuckle sardonically at the irony of life currently doing the same, if not for the morphine getting rid of the pain and dissolving every thought.

He only remembers falling asleep and he remembers that being restless, like a lot of things lately.

She's not laughing anymore, Victoria says when he fakes being asleep.

Well, newsflash, Billy thinks while his chest constricts and his shoulder throbs dully now, neither is he.

Once upon a time, he can't do a day without hearing Victoria laugh when she tells the punch line to a joke wrong in her attempt to be funny during whispered conversations in bed. Billy can't finish his day without blowing raspberries on Lucy's tummy and placing kisses on her little feet to get that little belly laugh of hers in return. He remembers Delia's giggles because she's two years old and ticklish and sometimes when it's just two of them of them and it's quiet, Delia likes to rest her sleepy head in the crook of his neck while he reads her a story while clutching Pinkerton.

Billy likes to hang with Reed on the quiet Saturday mornings before Delia and Victoria wake up and watch old Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny cartoons that make them both laugh.

Oh, and here's something Billy likes to consider their thing: two hearty bowls of Fruit Loops and Cheerios on those mornings.

Billy misses that.

He feels Victoria's lips softly press against his forehead, everything in his body screaming to wake up, react, and relish in it. But Billy doesn't.

He smells her perfume, hears her footsteps towards the door and then the final sound of the door closing behind her, and then…silence.

Billy opens his eyes, aware of his loneliness, being the cause of his wife's unhappiness and that's no laughing matter.

He reaches (because his feet know the way before his brain can register it, naturally) the house on Orchard Avenue and through the window, Billy sees Victoria with the biggest grin on her face, laughter always vibrant, blue eyes twinkling and lightly hitting Reed with pillows as he hits her back laughing too.

She looks happy and Billy also considers knocking but he doesn't.

Happiness is all Billy ever wants for her (didn't you know that?).

Vickie's smile always does make the prettiest of pictures, and her laughter is still contagious to him.

Billy will settle for that birthday present, instead.

Memory [mem-uh-ree] — the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences.

Billy remembers New York and actually misses it, but he can't run away that far.

He's a New York City guy with Genoa City small time roots.

Of his siblings, Billy relates to Traci the most. She is the secondary conscience when his gets tired of doing the right thing – even though letting Victoria go or ripping her heart out and killing all of the faith she has in him is the right thing. It is, and anyone who tells him different, can and should probably go kick rocks.

He plans it in his head like a well-oiled machine: he takes a drink in front of her for show, says a snide comment, or sarcastic remark that will put Vicki off (maybe place a bet here, another lucky filly winning there because hey, it's all just paper and Billy has a lot to burn) and then she'll want to let him go like their epic, historic romance never happens. And Victoria will look at him with heartbreak in her face and walk away like she should.

Then Billy takes a drink for real to numb the way he fucking hurts (a lot of tequila here, a little more flat beer here) on the inside even though he tells her to go away.

Billy takes the paper bag at the Club with his dinner consisting of a chicken salad because Ashley has this thing about being on a health kick, and spreading it to other Abbotts. Billy pulls out his wallet, placing a hundred dollar bill for his whiskey neat and going through the revolving door to The Trailer.

But hey, thanks for the memories, Vick.

"Billy, I'm so sorry, I couldn't be there for your birthday."

"It's cool," he answers, when it's really not. It hasn't been. "Luckily, big sis, I love you so I won't hold it against you. You didn't miss much anyway because hey, nothing says I love you like a generic note from the wife," he explains, lamely, stopping at a red light.

"It's that bad?"

"And in the eyes of the law, I'm a danger to Delia so my life is awesome, Trace. Chloe took my daughter away from me because of a bogus solicitation charge."

Traci audibly gasps, "Oh, God, no."

"I didn't do that, you know. I may be impulsive but I'm not stupid. I didn't even touch her."

His sister sighs, deeply, "I know, because I know you. But Billy, thank God you survived your accident. I don't know what I would have done if you died," she says, her voice cracking and on the brink of tears. "I'm sorry – it's just…Jack got control of Jabot back, Tucker came out of his coma and he's our new brother-in-law, and you're going through so much – I just feel really guilty for not being there."

He wishes his sister would stop stressing over things she can't control; he stops doing that a long time ago because why the hell fight? Why do anything?

"Well, that's life, right? Don't worry about it – I'm not."

You should and you are, his conscience says in an attempt way of breaking through his Push Vickie Away Even Though It Kills Me Plan.

His conscience can go to Hell.

Billy loves Jack, and he loves Ashley, but his relationship with Traci goes beyond being the middle daughter and the youngest son of John's kids.

There are memories of rainy New York mornings having lunch with his sister in between waking up hung-over and a new conquest in his bed. He knows of Traci's sensitivity but she's the most honest and objective. She knows all of his secrets – ones that Billy can't tell Jack, Ashley, or even his mom because a) they're not relevant or b) they're too mundane to be cared about: like the way Billy still enjoys a solid peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a grown man, spreading jelly first instead of peanut butter rather than the other way around, or he is actually ambidextrous but writes with his left hand more comfortably so is left-handed by choice, not by nature, or that New York cheesecake is his favourite dessert of all time (don't worry – triple chocolate cupcakes from Esther run a very narrow close second).

Traci also knows Billy's biggest secret of all: he's very much banged up and very much wide awake when Victoria tells him everything she holds back when he's awake; that she's so in love with him, but she can watch Billy out of control because it's too painful to have a front row seat. That's why Billy loves Victoria so much that he'll let her go and set her free.

And then that would be the end of that.

No, it's not really the end because Billy is still heartsick when he's alone missing her and even worse when he pushes her away.

Billy drives her the past the house he purchases with Victoria where the downstairs lights are dimmed but the upstairs bedroom light is on. A lot of nice, really great memories are made in that bedroom. But he drives away, angry that his stomach is in knots and his heart in his throat. He shouldn't care this much.

(guess we're not so genius after all, baby.)

"When I was younger, I drove a car while high on pills because my self-esteem was whittled away to almost nothing, so I can't judge you," Billy can't help but chuckle and allows the corners of his mouth to turn up slightly. Traci sighs, "but pushing Victoria away because you think it's for her own good isn't right. Not for anybody. You know that."

Billy laughs a hollow laugh, signaling left and turning on the freeway.

"She's not happy, so I'm letting her go," Billy replies, flippantly. "And really, why the hell should I reach out? So, what am I supposed to do, Traci? Stand in the middle of the lawn, hold a boom box over my head with our song playing, and pray that Victoria comes running and takes me back? No, it's not happening."

"But you're not even remotely happy."

"And what does it matter? It doesn't because I do this to myself. I'm consistent in messing up my own life so it doesn't matter."

Billy always shoots himself in the foot, the occurrences too many remember, but illegally adopting a baby: that's a big one for the Billy Abbott Screw Up Reel.

"Your well-being matters to everyone who loves you and care about you, even Victoria. I know she loves you and you love her. Life is too short."

Billy focuses on the road in front of him, his sister's voice on speakerphone.

He's not in the mood to cheat death again.

"That's all you got?"

He gets all that stuff about life being too short so that's why Billy should live his, and Vickie should live hers, since she is right back to Square One being Daddy's lackey, and him getting to see the inside of a holding cell more than a normal person should.

What then?

"I get that. Life is too short which is why Victoria should live hers and I'll try to live mine by trial and error," Billy explains dryly, while putting his new car in park because this – the Trailer – is Home Sweet Home now, "but hey, we'll always have the commemorative scrapbooks for the memories."

"Please don't joke about your marriage like that, Billy. All I'm going to tell you is you're a grown man with a choice to make. But I think your marriage is worth fighting for."

He's aware of the Abbott-Newman Inter-Marital Tally Sheet isn't great. Actually, it sucks.

Jack marries Nikki which results in one miscarriage, one stillbirth and the wife becoming a dependent pill-popper. Ashley marries Victor and his sister ends up, trapped at the Ranch (read: actually, it's Wisconsin's own Alcatraz), a hysterical pregnancy and a baby switch that Adam orchestrates to cover his own sorry ass, with a psychological break as a parting gift ("Tell Victor Billy Abbott says screw you," and then he carries Ashley out of there, out of hell.)

Then there's the current mess known as him and Victoria.

Billy just wishes – no, wishes are for suckers, so is hope, and optimism which Traci seems to have in spades.

"Marriages aren't meant to be perfect. But I know you'll do the right thing. I have a manuscript that needs my attention, so I'm going to have to, unfortunately."

"No worries. Later, sis."

"You call me anytime, no matter how late. My phone will always be on."

Billy can't help but smile at his sister's eagerness.

Then again, that's Traci as she is and Billy loves her for it.

"Thank you."

"Please take care of yourself. I love you."

"Love you, too."

Here's something Billy will most likely never admit to anyone, especially her: his favourite memory of Victoria is when she's drunk just like him, feeling the buzz of Jamaican rum, but she's happy and her eyes light up and she's actually a good time. They attempt to limbo but they fall over, landing beneath Caribbean sand. There's the sand beneath them, the sounds of celebration and steel drums all around and a starry night above, and the dramatics of Genoa City behind them for a little while.

Victoria's laugh is the one thing that sticks out the most in Billy's drunken memory, and it stays with Billy, somewhere implanted in his head within the threads of his psyche.

It stays with him when he's drunk and when he's stone cold sober.

(It's frustrating because Billy wishes Vickie would leave him alone and stay with him at all once.)

Journey [jur-nee] — a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.

"An Abbott and a Newman are doomed from the beginning. You and Victoria were never supposed to work, but you and Victoria do. Just something to think about," Jack says, clapping his brother on the back. But hey, Billy's a grown man – he prays he figures it out. "You don't have to live here – my offer about crashing at the poolhouse is open, now that Ashley's with Tucker."

This is what Billy knows and wishes Jack would understand: he has quite a lot to think about – he thinks about what Victoria sobbing on his shoulder when medicine says they'll never have a baby of their own, the day he gets Lucy and falls in love with her even though it's so fast and so sudden that Billy feels like he's walking through the Twilight Zone, the morning Jana kidnaps Delia and Lucy with the cold grip of guilt and fear starting to settle, making the ramifications of his actions way too real, and then the carnage left behind when the whole, ugly truth comes out.

And now, Billy's at the lowest point in his life with only the bottle to make the pain go away.

"Hey, you really think we'd be like Thelma and Louise?"

Billy smiles down at his wife, "Of course," he allows her to loop her arms through his and they walk through Genoa City's underground district – where there's more than one tattoo parlor, and a hookah bar that he never knows existed in a quaint little town like Genoa City. "What? Don't you?"

Victoria walks closer to him and snuggles into his arm, "Hmm – yeah," and then she glances up at him, coy and Billy can't help but wonder what goes on in that pretty, sexy head of hers, "but I'll be driving us over the cliff."

Billy can argue and debate (he's spends four years of high school on the debate team bullshitting his way through everything and anything, and damn, he's good) why he wants to drive them over the cliff into forever.

But hey, as along as Victoria is on this journey that is Marriage, he can live with that.

Now, he's in the fifties-style car all by himself with no one in the driver's seat as it goes over the cliff all the same. His marriage hangs on by mere threads and Billy can't get back to that journey to forever with Victoria if he tries.

It's almost like climbing the steepest hill and getting nowhere.

Billy is too emotionally drained to go against the grain anymore: to Vickie, he's so sorry for fucking everything up, to Reed, he actually loves this kid and isn't trying to steal JT's spot, to Chloe, she finally gets her way and well, their daughters is now hers – but Chloe has to let Dee Dee know that Daddy will always love her, and to DeeDee, Daddy loves her more than she will ever know and their journey down the aisle is going to take a little longer but he'll be there, baby.

"My sister's really hurting right now, and she needs you."

Billy scoffs, slurs his words from not being drunk but from being kicked awake. He always sounds drunk when he wakes up from sleep, mere minutes, "What? Did she send over here to tell me that? Besides, Victoria doesn't want me."

Nick sighs, "You have to talk to her now, before you lose her forever," his brother-in-law says, as a parting shot and Billy wishes he'd leave – he wishes a lot of people would leave him alone even though Billy knows being trapped in his own head isn't healthy. Amazing how Common Sense manages to crack through being hung-over. "The sooner you talk to her, the better. You're gonna lose her forever if you wait. Believe it or not, I'm pulling for you, dude. So, get it together."

Nick leaves and then Billy is left with his thoughts and the frustration of there not being any more beer to numb the white hot pain because he's right here – here in this trailer at the lowest point in his life, since gambling becomes everything to him, since he watches his powerful, superhuman father lying in a hospital bed on the brink of death. Billy can still hear the steady beep of the monitor.

He can see the way John's chest fall and doesn't rise again, and still, it's not real to him.

All he wants is Victoria, their home, custody of Lucy, the certainty of Delia still being in his life so Chloe can't use their daughter as a blade swinging precariously over his throat, and his family.

Billy wants home.

(But Billy's a lost custody battle, a black market baby he still loves, a devastated wife, a couple of gambling losses, a favourite watch that the bookies have now, and onetwothreefourfive—he's lost count—bottles of beer too late in his journey with Victoria to sunset skies and the thought of forever is a stupid pipe dream.)

Gravity [grav-i-tee] — the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the center of the earth.

Attraction is a funny thing – the fact that it's still there between him and her when Billy tries his damn hardest to push her away. Even more now that Billy has no access whatsoever to the only child he's got and he finds himself still missing Lucy and wondering if by some hand of God, he'll get to give her away and dance with her at her wedding. Just play any role in her life. At the same time, he wonders if there's a small chance he'll have a legit child with Vicki, grow old (correction: age handsomely) with her and get to be a grandfather somewhere down a really long line.

Maybe it's got something to do with gravity but Billy regrets coming here because there's just him, Vicki, the air hanging with words that neither of them can bring themselves to say. Perhaps, it's the smallest part of him that allows his feet to be rooted to the ground. Maybe, it's the smallest part of him that never wants to leave in the place.

He doesn't know these days – but Billy gazes at Victoria through conflicted eyes and a slowly crumbling resolve and she looks back with eyes that try to stay strong (that's Vickie – strong as a brick wall, soft as a marshmallow) but have tears brimming in them nonetheless.

Billy finds the Birthday Present He Never Gets in the closet right next the suitcase, and smiles slightly at the framed picture.

He remembers that night of being a younger, more handsome Hugh Hefner and Victoria as a Playboy Bunny named Barbie circa 1972.

Here's the best thing about that night when it's all over (and Lauren is okay): there's an epic Scrabble Battle of the Sexy Euphemism and Metaphoric Kind going in their bed while Victoria wears one of his shirts and Billy wears her bunny ears with nothing but his Jack-O-Lantern boxers on.

So much for clean breaks and easy getaways – nothing about this (dating a Newman, having sex with a Newman, marrying a Newman, falling so damn hard for Victoria Newman) is easy. It never is. Billy knows that from the beginning.

"Uh, hi."

"Hey," Victoria answers, stunned and clears her throat. "I wasn't expecting to see you here. I thought after you turned down my offer for coffee – "

Billy shifts from one foot to the other, and then mentally curses himself for even caring and not acting as cool as he should be.

"Yeah, I was just getting the rest of my stuff."

"I see," Victoria replies, and folds herself about herself, like she always does when she wants she say more than she does. Billy knows that. He also knows that he misses everything about this house – the same one they try to build together, and he still remembers how much Victoria laughs and glows when he takes her in her arms and carries her through the threshold. "Well, why do you have to go?" she questions, in a quiet voice that trembles and shakes before Victoria's eyes are shiny with the tears Billy is aware he causes – which is why he has to go. He's caused enough damage to her, and to them. "Look, all this time, I've been there for you. Comforting you. Holding you. I even bailed you out of jail. I testified at Delia's custody hearing. I've been there for you," she tells him and it's sad the way Billy gives a damn, but Vickie's way past under his skin now. It's so much bigger than that. "Do you think even if it's for a little while, you could be there for me – even after everything we've been through? I really need my best friend, my partner, and my husband," and then she takes his hand and still Billy can feel his sweaty palms, his racing heart, as she encloses hand around his, and oh dear God, he can't speak. "Please, Billy, don't go."

"I shouldn't have come."

She sees right through him and that makes Billy a little frustrated. "That's a lie and you know it. This is right. It feels right," Victoria says, without missing a beat. She presses herself against him, the flowery scent of her musk, wafting around it and his brain recognizes it, remembers it like a ribbon that can't come loose from his finger no matter how hard Billy tries to pull it off. She questions, eyes wide and expectant, yet serious, "Come on, are you saying after all this time you don't have any feelings for me?"

"Of course, I have feelings for you."

Billy misses the curves of her body, the feelings of her soft cheek underneath his fingertips, and his way she presses her lips against his torso when they make love and the way she says his name on a breath like a prayer or a wish when she reaches her limit and he can't stand it anymore and reaches his, too.

They see the stars, dancing, spinning and then exploding behind their eyelids –

Then there's the sound of settling and silence as Victoria curls into him and he sighs, and Billy kisses the side of her head and their fingers find each other, naturally.

Billy can't help but pull Victoria in like the force of gravity and attraction between then, kiss her back like it's the end of world, and feel her fingers play with the hairs at the nape of his neck and fall onto the couch with the world exploding and burning and crumbling all around, but behind them for a little longer.

This has to stop, but then again, gravity is a powerful force that can't really be stopped, can it?

And of course, there's this thing called l-o-v-e that makes it hard to push her away any longer.

Here's what makes Billy stay, ultimately, despite the fact that they've got a lot of kinks to work out: it's like he never leaves, and Victoria hangs onto him for dear life, kissing him and silently pleading with him to stay.

"Stay," she whispers and Billy reaches up, brushes a wayward lock of hair from her face.

Against all of the cons, Billy set up in his head, he answers, "Okay," and presses his lips against Victoria's right knuckle like they never split up.

"You know, when we're like this – it feels like there's no bad or ugliness in the world. Just me and you and everything else thrown away," she observes, and chuckles. "I like this. Sometimes, I think how my life would have turned out if we never met."

"Well, what the way I screwed up with Lucy, and with us – "

She rests her forearms gently against his chest so she faces him, and he can't tear his gaze away from her if he tries, "No," Victoria cuts him off, gently shaking her head, "I think about what would have happened if we hadn't crossed paths that night?"

Billy laughs, bitterly and mutters, "You'd be a better person."

"I'd be worse off, actually," she replies, seriously. "Half a person. Honestly speaking, Billy."

"Hey, I'm going to make some coffee. I'm making you some," Victoria declares, putting on her robe and Billy is left wrapped up in her magenta (or is it simply pink?) blanket. There's still so much left unsaid, so much to say, and so much to be done. He glances at the suitcases and sighs.

"Hey, Vick – I'm sorry."

Victoria turns around, solemn, "Me too," and then flashing a smile at him, she disappears into the kitchen to make his coffee the way only she knows how: black with four sugars while he dresses up with the overwhelming urge to disappear while he has a chance.

But here's the thing: Billy still loves Victoria enough to stay visible.

Billy still remembers that little tradition of having deep conversations before bed into the wee hours of the night, and yeah, they still have that tradition, that little tradition still exists.

So, Victoria gives him his coffee and talk as she offers at the Club.

Throughout all of their talking, laying things out on the table and Semi-Arguing (because that's what they do best, love), here's what Billy discovers: he still gravitates towards Victoria and is genuinely surprised when Victoria goes upstairs and presents Billy with his wedding silver band, as it sits in the middle of her palm, glinting at him as light bounces off it.

"We disagree on a variety of things, and we can work through those things and work them out, but we both that we don't want to throw this marriage away. It's too important. So, what are you going to do, Billy?"

(He takes it in his hand, allows Victoria to put the ring back on his finger, and declares attraction and gravity the Winners in the battle against his Stubbornness.

She grins and kisses him, before pulling away, "Welcome home, husband."

Billy loves this woman too damn much for his good.)

Eclipse [ih-klips] — the obscuration of the light of the moon by the intervention of the earth between it and the sun (lunar eclipse) or the obscuration of the light of the sun by the intervention of the moon between it and a point on the earth (solar eclipse); to make less outstanding or more important by comparison or to surpass.

EPILOGUE

Billy only remembers bits and pieces of his second daughter's birth.

(And he thinks of Lucy a lot while Victoria squeezes his hand through the contractions and sobs while pushing.)

"Victoria, we need one good, solid push. Come on."

She squeezes his hand through another contraction, as it trembles in his. Billy looks at his wife, brown tendrils of her hair escaping the confines of a hair scrunchie, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and the tears clammy on her flushed cheeks.

She's so, so tired.

"Billy, I can't. I can't do it," she sobs, through tears and pain she's very aware of – which, in a twisted way is what she wants because she's comatose the last time, "I can't."

He squeezes her hand, kissing her hair and aware of the five o'clock shadow on his face but he doesn't care, "Yes, you can, baby," he assures his wife, while trying to take enough courage for the both of them (he's not strong enough on his own). "We're so close. This is our fresh start, Vicki. You can do it, babe."

Somehow, Billy manages to breathe and stay calm, but he's shaking with anticipation on the inside.

If someone asks how he feels the day his daughter is born, where Billy's head is at, how his heart beat when his and Vicki's daughter is born on the twelfth of May two thousand and twelve, Billy can't answer just for the sole reason, he can't remember.

Billy does remember the sound of his daughter's loud cry.

And to his surprise, he is starting to tear up because it feels like a dream that isn't supposed to happen in the first place.

They decide on Elizabeth, in honour of Jill and Katherine – they love Elizabeth Foster so much and her memory and really, Billy loves Grandma Liz a lot (he still misses her and finds her somewhere in his thoughts). He remembers seeing her a lot as a kid, with Uncle Snapper and Uncle Greg. And Victoria loves the name Elizabeth, because of her favourite fictional heroine, Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice.

And well, Victoria ultimately lets their daughter have her late cousin's name as a tribute to Colleen.

Billy merely glances at her with a soft smile, and tells her simply, "I love you," with a kiss on the forehead and one of the forehead for his new infant daughter.

Elizabeth Colleen Abbott (read: affectionately shortened to Ellie because it's short, simple and sweet for a little girl and Billy's too freaking happy to contest that) cries and screams her way into the world, weighing in at eight pounds nine ounces and a tall twenty-two inches long.

He likes to think that Ellie has her mother's nose and really cute ears. She's born with a head of barely visible blonde slightly brown hair like her daddy. Maybe, because he kisses Victoria as she sleeps and goes with his heart in throat, into the nursery to see his newborn daughter – three hours old and counting – in the NICU because Ellie is born needing a little help breathing after her birth.

But to Billy's relief, Ellie's a beautiful, healthy little girl and that's all he can ever ask for.

Victoria can't stop laughing, sobbing and crying as her baby with Billy is placed in her arms. She's beautiful. Billy comes back from telling both of their families about baby Elizabeth (read: Ellie, because it rolls off her tongue like the word easily, like the word love).

It's the weirdest thing that she's glad it's the first time, Victoria is aware of what has occurred here.

She's given birth to this little girl that has Billy's eyes, her nose and lips, hair that is barely visible and tickle Victoria's nose as she gently presses a kiss to Ellie's forehead. She promises to love this baby forever and always because she's all hers. Ellie has the beginning of dimples, and there are ten fingers and ten toes. Ellie's happy and healthy.

"Yeah," Victoria whispers alone – there are Abbotts and Newmans in the waiting room anxious to meet the new addition, she's sure so Billy kisses his girls with a promise to come back – as Elizabeth focuses on her face and coos and slightly whimpers. She flails her arms, her little hands curled into fists. Victoria rocks her, "Shh. It's okay, baby girl. I'm your mommy. And you know what? Your daddy and I are gonna love you forever."

Nothing will ever eclipse the magnitude of this day in her heart.

After all, the four months of bed rest makes everything worthwhile.

Ellie opens her eyes, blinks, and looks into the faces of her parents – her mommy and daddy, people who will love her and cherish. Elizabeth is a culmination of Billy and Victoria; half Abbott and half Newman – already this child carries her father's charming personality and her mother's determination, at least to eat, anyway. Her little hand encloses her daddy's thumb and when Ellie sneezes Victoria falls hopelessly, helplessly in love.

"We've waited a long time for you," Victoria whispers, gazing into her peaceful daughter's face as she yawns, closes her eyes and sleeps.

"Yes, we have," Billy adds in reply, stroking Reed and Delia's new baby sister's rosy cheek gently with a finger. He smiles, saying softly. "Quite an entrance you made there, huh?"

"Billy, I'm thinking of Lucy a lot today."

Pause. Sigh.

Thump-thump.

"Me too," Billy says, nodding absent-mindedly. After all who can forget that little girl with the red hair, bright eyes in the morning and that laugh?

Lucy will never be replaced, or made less important in their hearts.

(She never leaves.)

Billy and Victoria kiss to the forever that almost never happens while baby Elizabeth is silenced by contentedly sucking on her first of one many bottles.

Nothing can ever eclipse this: the newborn baby smell, the way Ellie rests peacefully in Billy's arms and goes to sleep with innocence of a baby, and the way Victoria gazes at him with love in her eyes like they finally get it right and they're gonna be okay.

It's not an end to this love story, but rather, the beginning of something greater yet to come.

(Here's something Billy & Victoria want the world to know, naturally: there's still going to be a bang and a whimper.)

Hold my hand and we're halfway there
Hold my hand and I'll take you there

"Somewhere" – West Side Story

A/N: Aannnd that's a wrap. If you've made it all the way down here to the end, then you have my kudos for life. Oh my God – I cannot believe this is finally done! I took a few liberties with the dialogue from the show because a) I was too lazy to remember it word for word and b) I didn't like it and changed it for my own benefit. In this they reconcile and work through their problems so Billy leaving to Hong Kong didn't happen here because that is a pile of BS.

Thank you for sticking with me and pushing me along when I wanted to quit and give up. I love you for that. This is the hardest thing, and longest thing, I've ever written in my entire life – I kid you not – but I did it with the help of every word of encourage and every little piece of feedback. Oh, thanks to my girl, Kate – for telling me to think outside the box when I struggled six months ago with this oneshot. I did, so thank you.

Quickly my reasoning behind naming the Villy baby, "Elizabeth": I did that in honour of the Foster family because Billy still has the Foster name and that made me think that he is probably still close to his uncle Snapper and Uncle Greg even though we don't see it. And I wholeheartedly believe that Billy was close to his grandmother Liz Foster and was even sad he didn't get to see her before she died.

And Victoria loved Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice so that would be her reasoning for the name of her & Billy's daughter. I wouldn't put it past Victoria to name her daughter after a literary character that is as strong as Elizabeth in my opinion. I shortened to Ellie because it's uncommon for girls with the name Elizabeth to be called Ellie for short. I figured Billy and Victoria wanted to be simple but different when it came to the name of their baby. So, that's why I did it. So, her parents would called her Ellie and close family while everyone on the outside and really formal people like Katherine and older GC people would address her as Elizabeth, get it? Hopefully, you understand and if you don't, PM me and we'll chat about it some more.

After seven months of writing and re-writing, I can finally release the breath I've been holding and tell you guys that this Villy novel (because that's what it is…) is completely and utterly done. Finished. Finito.

Once again, thank you and as always, honest feedback is appreciated and encouraged.

EDIT: I've edited all of the typos and added some stuff while being miles and miles away from home. Hopefully, you still care enough to read and review. Many thanks from Belgium – xoxo.

-Erika