"I hear my mother's voice when I'm going to sleep at night." Sam McCall sat on the bed with her legs pulled up, her chin resting on her knees. Her arms wrapped around her legs, holding them in place. She closed her eyes and turned her head, replacing the chin on her knees with her cheek. "I have all these memories, and they haunt me when I try to go to bed. That's why I don't sleep."

Sam was usually pretty good about getting away after the sex was done, so he wouldn't know that she rarely slept, so he wouldn't ask her questions. That's what she liked about Jason Morgan, the fact that he didn't ask a ton of questions. Maybe that was why she had told him the truth. His lack of questions meant that Sam didn't have to spend time coming up with fake answers. So, when he finally asked her why she was there, all that came out was the truth. Since then, however, she hadn't been able to stop telling him the truth. So, when he asked her why she laid there awake, staring at the ceiling instead of going to sleep, all she could do was tell him.

Sam was surprised that someone like Jason Morgan would even take an interest in her. When they first met over a game of pool and a few rounds of drinks at Jake's, she hadn't known anything about him. He was just another guy, and she was a girl that wanted to get laid. She didn't know that he was a mob enforcer, and when the notorious Sonny Corinthos left town with his new bride, Brenda Barrett, she definitely didn't know that this guy, this tall, hot, blond, was going to be the one that took over the reigns. Sam had been in it for some good times, and good times they were. She came out of it in some kind of pseudo relationship with the local mob boss.

She didn't really know what she and Jason had. She knew that they had fun in bed, and she knew that he took care of her when it was needed. She didn't live with him, but she spent a lot of time in his penthouse. She slept over now, unlike their days in Jake's when one of them would get dressed and leave without another word. She trusted him, and Sam hadn't trusted someone in… Well, she hadn't trusted anyone ever. There was her brother, Danny, but Sam didn't look at it as her trusting him as much as she had to be trustworthy to him. Danny depended on her. Danny was the reason she had come to Port Charles, tried to find her birth mother.

Sam wanted some place safe for his brother to go, a place where he didn't have to worry, a place where he wasn't hidden. When she found out that her mother was rich, part of a royal family, no less, Sam thought that she might help her. She thought that her mother would miss her enough, think about her enough, that she would do anything for Sam. All she wanted was a safe place to bring him, a real home.

But, Sam got to Port Charles, and her mother was happy. Her mother was not only happily married, but everyone expected them to have a little Jacks any time now. She was successful, and she had her family, and then there was her loving nephew and… Just thinking about it made Sam want to scream. She wasn't even thinking about her. She didn't even consider the daughter that she had given away.

"When I'm actually asleep," Sam said, "I see her standing there, yelling at me. I hear her telling Danny that he's not worth anything. And sometimes, in my dreams, I'm sneaking down in the basement. The house is on fire and I'm on my way to get Danny out. I look up, and there's this figure reaching out to me. I always thought it was my mom, ya know? Like, she was trying to help me. But, then, right before I wake up, my other mother comes and she slams the door."

Sam slid her feet along the bed until her legs were flat. She put her hands down at either of her sides, pressing into the mattress. "Do you have dreams like that?"

Jason's voice came out of the darkness. "I don't dream," he said. As Sam's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see him sitting across the room, slouching in a chair against the wall.

Sam often forgot about Jason's so-called handicap. She had never known Jason Quartermaine, so she didn't know that he was supposed to be someone else. And most of his handicaps, she saw as being blessings, or at least, as things that could be blessings. Sam would love to not only not be able to dream, but to also not even realize that she didn't dream. She wished things were as black and white for her as they were for Jason. Of course, to get to that point, she would need a serious brain injury and Sam wasn't too keen on that idea. She would just like some of the effects without the actual accident.

People said that Jason was brain damaged and treated him like he was something less, now, but as far as Sam saw, he was better than most of the people in Port Charles. Okay, so he was in the mob, and that wasn't exactly an upstanding position in society, and she had heard that he used to be mob enforcer for Sonny Corinthos and killing people was bad, but just as a person… Jason didn't judge. He didn't look down at other people because they did something that society had deemed bad. He let people make their own decisions, let them live their lives. He may have been a bad citizen, but he was a very good person.

"Why don't you just go talk to her?"

Things were so simple in Jason's mind. Just walk up to Alexis Davis-Jacks and say, Hi, I'm the daughter you gave away. Glad to see me? Yeah, that wasn't going to work. Even if Alexis believed her, she wouldn't be too happy to find out that her daughter was someone who took every opportunity to make her unhappy. Sam was very good at covering things up, and while Alexis could never prove that Sam was the one that derailed all of her cases against the Corinthos-now-Morgan operation, she knew that it was Sam. She was pretty sure that Alexis figured that it was her connection to Jason that had Sam doing what she could do to destroy all of her cases against them. She had no idea that Sam was doing her best to punish her for giving her away. Considering that there were worse things she could have done when she came to town, Alexis should have been happy that Sam was only interfering in her cases. Sam could have come and tried to steal her husband.

"It's not that simple, anymore," Sam said as she threw her legs over the side of the bed. She pushed herself up and went to the window. She watched the snow fall as she said, "Maybe when I first got here, but now… Yeah, now it's not going to happen."

Sam would never know what would have happened if she'd given Alexis a chance when she first came to town. Her original plan had been to be honest. She just hadn't expected to see Alexis so happy. Some part of Sam thought that the moment she met Alexis, she would feel something and know, just somehow know deep down that this was her daughter. But, Alexis had barely given her a glance until she threw herself into her path. That meant she was in town for months before she could even get her own mother to look at her, and now when she looked at Sam, her eyes just held disappointment and frustration.

"It's too late," Sam said with a sigh. She put a hand against the cold glass. "Maybe I shouldn't have even come here. It's not like I'm really accomplishing anything."

"What do you want to accomplish?"

"I want to be able to sleep at night." Sam let her hand fall from the window and turned to look at Jason. "I want to know that Danny doesn't have to worry. I want to be able to take care of him without doing horrible things, and I've done some really bad things to take care of him."

"Have you killed anyone that didn't deserve it?"

Sam found it interesting how Jason put forth the question. It was a look into how his mind worked. Sometimes, she wondered if those were just his plain thoughts, or if it was how his brain worked things so he could live with what he did. How did that work with his brain damage? Jason had told her once that he couldn't lie, back when she begged him to keep her secret about Alexis. "As long as nobody asks me, fine," he had said. "If they ask me a direct question, though, I have to tell the truth. I don't know how to lie. That part of my brain doesn't work." If he couldn't lie, that meant that he had to believe everything that he said, so he truly did believe in the code of ethics that he lived by. Some people deserved to die, and those, it was okay to kill. Those were people who had hurt you or someone you loved. To kill anyone else would be bad.

"No," Sam said, her voice soft, "but the rest of the world doesn't live by the same code that you do, Jason. The things I've done… Even just the things I've done since I came to Port Charles are enough for her to look at me with disgust. She already looks at me like that. Maybe if I'd told her when I first came here, but Jason, she was so… She wouldn't have cared."

"I can't imagine what would have happened if you had told her, and I can't tell you what's going to happen if you tell her now." Another one of his truths, a fact of his condition. Imagination could be cultivated, but it wasn't automatic. If there were logical details to sort through, Jason could make a prediction of what was going to happen, but he couldn't just imagine it. Lack of imagination and the ability to lie were so foreign to Sam, but to Jason Morgan, they were just a fact of life.

"All I can tell you is that it has to be better than this." Jason stood from his chair and Sam could only watch him as he walked to her. It wasn't that the sight of him took her breath away, though she did have to admit that she enjoyed looking at him. His chiseled torso was also very, very nice to touch. But no, it wasn't the sexual attraction that stopped her as much as the action itself. She'd never had anyone who came to her when she was in pain. Sam had always suffered through it alone. That Jason, who barely knew her, who killed people and ordered them killed as part of his career… That he would come to her with as much tenderness as he had within him made Sam stop and think that not every upstanding citizen was nearly as good a person as Jason Morgan.

Jason cupped her chin and tilted Sam's head up, making her look in his eyes. "You're a good person."

Sam turned her head to the side, or at least tried. Jason didn't let go of her chin, forced her back to him. "Not nearly good enough for my mother," Sam whispered.

"You don't know what Alexis will think until you give her the chance. And, if she doesn't want you, then that's her loss."

Sam looked at Jason and wondered why. Why did he care so much? What was it about her that made him give a damn? She would never ask him, because she was afraid of the answer. She didn't want to be anyone's pity case, and she was afraid that this was just some kind of charity. She preferred to believe that he saw something worthwhile in her, that for whatever reason, he felt something for Sam that made him actually want to help her. As long as she didn't ask him, she didn't have to know whatever truth might be hiding behind his cold, blue eyes.

"I wish that I had done things differently, sometimes," Sam softly told him. "I wish that I had just come to town and told her and then… If she wanted to get to know me, then I'd have stayed, and if she didn't, I'd have left, and that would be it. And sometimes, I wish that I'd never come here at all. And others…"

Sam let her words trail off as she looked up at Jason. She waited for him to urge her on, then remebered who she was thinking about. Jason Morgan didn't urge anyone toward anything. He just waited, until you were ready. Sam sighed and said, "I've never had anyone that gave a damn about me before, no one other than Danny. I just… Sometimes, I think I should go."

"And other times?"

"Other times, I think I'd miss you." Sam gave a short bark of a laugh. "Funny, huh? With how things started?" Jason just shrugged and Sam sighed. "I should probably be going, anyway. It's getting late, and you'll never get any sleep with me here."

"I don't sleep much, anyway," Jason told her. "I only need a few hours." He shrugged and his hand dropped from her face. "Go back to bed, Sam. Worry about Alexis in the morning."

Sam turned from Jason, looked out the window again. If she was going to skip town, she should probably do it soon. A storm was headed their way, and it was supposed to drop a lot of snow and ice on Port Charles.

She turned back to Jason and asked, "Why do you care so much?" She wanted to take it back the second it came out of her mouth. Hadn't she just decided that she didn't want to know why Jason helped her? But, it was something about the moment, looking out the window, ready to leave town… Depending on his answer, she figured she would be out of town the next day, the day after at the latest.

"You're lost," Jason told her. "I was lost once. If someone hadn't…" He shook his head and even in the dark, Sam could see the confusion in his eyes. He didn't know how to explain it, how to put his feelings into words. Was that why so many people thought of him as a robot, because when he was at a loss for words, he just went cold?

"You want to help me," Sam said softly.

Jason nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I don't want to tell you what to do, though. I hated all those people telling me what to do. I want you to make your own decisions. I just… If you really wanted to go, you'd already be gone. I just want you to know that I'll help you, if you need it. If you want it."

Sam looked up at him and wished someone like Jason had been in her life back when everything was just starting to go downhill. He had already offered to bring Danny to town, to set the two of them up with a place to live, and she had almost taken him up on the offer. Then, she could just forget about Alexis and this family that she had come to Port Charles to find. She couldn't do it, though. Pride comes before the fall, and Sam was looking down the hill, waiting for her pride to shove her down into the abyss below.

Sam reached up, flattened her palm against Jason's cheek. She smiled at him and said, "I'll go back to bed if you come with me."

Jason didn't say anything. He just took her by the wrist and led her back to the bed. Jason pulled back the covers and let Sam climb in before sliding in next to her. He pulled the covers over the both of them and laid down. Sam moved in and Jason's arm automatically moved so she could come in close. He put his arm around her and Sam leaned against his chest, closing her eyes.

"I should probably apologize," she said with a sigh.

"For what?"

"You were supposed to meet up with AJ tonight, and I…" She groaned. Sam had had another run-in with Alexis and instead of handling it like an adult, calming herself down, she had run to Jason, ready to skip town. Instead of telling her that she was being stupid, he had just cancelled his plans and spent the night listening to her rant. Sex came after the rant, and it was good sex, so that probably made things better, but still… Jason had plans, and Sam had ruined them.

"It's fine," Jason said. "It wasn't anything important. Just the weekly get-together."

Sam almost laughed. Jason and AJ weren't best friends, but they were brothers, and their sister, Emily, was determined to keep as much of her family together as humanly possible. Sam could understand that. Hadn't she come to town to join a family? She'd probably feel the same way if her family even knew that she existed. Jason wasn't a social person, but he did his weekly night out with his brother because his sister wanted him to do it. It was nice, though. Jason had family. Everyone had family, except Sam.

Her laugh died at the thought and she sighed. "Anyway, I'm just saying. I'm sorry."

"It's fine." She felt Jason's lips as he kissed her forehead. "Go to sleep. If you still want to leave town tomorrow, I'll help you, get you anything you need."

Sam waited for it, and when it didn't come, she said, "But?"

Jason sighed. "But, I hope that you won't want to go when you wake up."

Sam turned her head just enough to lay a soft, lingering kiss against Jason's bare chest, then turned her head back to lay with her cheek flat against him. He was such a good person, so much better than Sam. She knew that she didn't deserve him, but she didn't care. She had him, at least for the time being, and that had to be good enough. She had no one else. She had to have Jason.