Title: Cage of Lonliness
Author: Tasha
E-mail: General Hospital
Rating: PG
Characters: Lulu
Pairings: None
Word Count: 554
Genre: Gen
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me, they are property of ABC, Disney and General Hospital. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Set before Lulu showed up on screen during Liz and Lucky's wedding. She thinks about her family and how she's grown up. Written for the 100songs challenge on Livejournal. This is 001: Learn To Be Lonely.

Lulu Spencer knows her family's history. She is the daughter of the town's most well-known couple. Everyone attended their wedding, everyone remembers it, she hears it all the time. In a way, she and her brother have a lot to live up to, being the children born to two people so in love as Luke and Laura were. She knows, deep inside, that her parent's legacy lives on in the two of them and they are living, breathing manifestations of such a love.

It is a burden to bear for her. Lucky, he has it easy, she thinks. He's been in love with Elizabeth since they were teenagers. Right now, they are living up to what is expected of them, or what she feels is expected of them. She, on the other hand, has no one. She has no friends, no boyfriends. She has Lucas, her cousin, for a friend but somehow, it's not the same.

Since her mother got sick and had to be taken away, she got used to the lonliness. She grew up with it, living with her Grandma Lesley and hardly ever seeing her dad. He had always been off on some adventure, living as he had twenty years ago, as if he had no responsibilities. To him, he didn't. Her brothers came around, but they were older and had lives that didn't revolve just around her. Lucky was going to get married and Nikolas had more drama than she thought anyone could understand, but they both had families and jobs that took up a lot of their time.

She had learned to be on her own, to have no one to play with except her dolls and other toys. Even without her father's significant influence, people found that she had his attitude; there was no doubt that she was Luke's daughter. In the same way her father had, she discovered that lonliness wasn't so bad.

Until she grew up and found that she didn't fit in with any of the kids at school. They all knew her family's history; there was no doubt that their parents had told them. Her mother had gone crazy, her father was a deadbeat, what was normal about that? The town's greatest love story had fallen apart and was no doubt talked about. She couldn't relate. Everyone else's parents were normal, they had regular jobs. Their parents didn't go off on wild adventures every couple of weeks just for the hell of it. They didn't leave their children behind to be raised by grandparents. She didn't have a mother to talk about all the girl stuff with. Grandma Lesley was great, but she wasn't her mother. She didn't need a father to threaten boyfriends, but even if she did, she's sure that Nikolas and Lucky could cover that easily.

Surviving alone wasn't so good when Lulu watched the kids talking about parties, flirting with each other, going to dances and formals and all the other things teenagers were doing. Whereas before, being alone was comforting, knowing that she didn't have to worry about anyone but herself, now it was a cage around her. It trapped her and she didn't know how to get out.

It was easy, learning to be lonely. It happened gradually, over time, and she didn't realize that unlearning it wouldn't happen over night.