Part VII
Nikolas smoothed his hand over Elizabeth's belly, leaning closer to the bed. From his vantage point he could see the gently swell of their child a few inches away. He watched the digital readout of the fetal monitor and remembered what the specialists had told him. He had always been a quick study with numbers, used to going over the accounts for the Cassadine family had been his responsibility for years.
Now, as he watched the dangerously high numbers that taunted him on the readout, he struggled to remember what Chloe had said to him moments before.
He knew he should trust... that he should have faith... but he'd been in love with Elizabeth for so many years and had been without her for nearly the same amount of time. In his darkest moments, he'd often wondered if it was his lot in life to get this close... only to lose everything dear to him every single time.
Spencer had decided to lay everything on the line. This, he believed, was the time for him to step up. Pointing an accusatory finger at his great-uncle he gave him a piece of his mind. "I know you've been pushing my father to marry her to give him an 'heir,' but what you always seem to forget is that my father has one... he has me!"
He took the answering silence as some kind of agreement. Spencer's chest puffed out a bit as he met his great-grandmother's pointed gaze. "Well," she began, "it seems you have figured this all out on your own." She turned to Katherine with a smile. "Why did you need to bring me here for this?"
Katherine gave Stefan a smug look. "You are the true head of this family, Helena. What you say is law. You know that Spencer should succeed his father to the title. I've raised him to be a true Cassadine prince."
Helena had a curious look on her face. "Have you now?" She walked a circle around Spencer, looking the young man up and down. "Is this what nearly a decade and a half of your 'parenting' has wrought for us?"
Lost in her own internal debate, Katherine rambled on. "He's fluent in five languages including Russian and Greek. He is a fine horseman and has an appreciation for fine art and music. The family history is a subject he can recite from memory. Just ask him... give him the name of anyone in the family tree and he can tell you who they were born to and if they had children of their own."
Both of Helena's eyebrows raised in elegant arches. "My," she touched a hand to her heart, "you have spent quite a bit of time on this, haven't you?"
Katherine rushed forward and touched her son on his shoulder in a show of solidarity. "I have raised him to be a true Cassadine heir... all that remains is for you to make it official."
"And his 'discussion' with Elizabeth," Helena questioned, "am I to overlook the damage he has done?"
"What difference does it make," Katherine demanded as she turned her gaze on Stefan, "you've pointed out time and time again that Spencer was conceived out of wedlock. Why worry about Elizabeth's pregnancy? She is just falling into the same pattern that we've gone through. Why should she have consideration when there is already an heir?"
"And if it wasn't for Elizabeth... my mother and father would have been married!" His anger bled through his voice, the crackle of rage that ripped from his throat. "She deserves to pay for what she did!"
The accusation hung in the air, ringing against the walls. And Spencer had the intelligence to see the change in Stefan's demeanor even through the fog of his rage.
Stefan lifted his hand and smoothed his hand over his beard, his hand subtly shaking as if he couldn't trust himself. He dragged his gaze back to Spencer's face, ignoring Katherine's wary expression. "Is that what you've thought all these years?"
"It's the truth!" The pain in his heart cracked the tone of his voice. "It's her fault that my mother had to stay so far away."
Stefan pressed his hand to his forehead, fighting his own internal battle. "Sit," he commanded, and the angry little boy inside of Spencer understood the order... And obeyed. Stefan nailed Katherine with a look. "I'm about to set him straight, Katherine... and the court order be damned." He pointed at Spencer. "By the sound of the words coming out of his mouth you've broken the order yourself."
Katherine didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. "He deserves to know the-"
"The truth, Katherine?" Stefan's face wore an expression of utter disbelief. "I find it hard to believe that you're trying to say that you've been telling him the truth!"
"I told him what he needed to know-"
Stefan turned his back on Katherine and addressed Spencer directly. "I don't have the time to find out what your mother told you all these years... in fact I don't have the stomach to hear it. Suffice to say that I'm about to give you a little history lesson."
Spencer folded his arms over his chest and sat back against the ornately carved armchair. "I won't listen to your lies."
A muscle ticked in Stefan's jaw, a familiar sign that Spencer recognized from his own father's repertoire of expressions. It didn't bode well for him.
"I have done many things in defense of our family," he stared Spencer straight in his eyes, "but I do not lie to you."
Spencer nodded slowly. He felt the weight of Stefan's statement on his shoulders as a weighted physical touch.
"When your mother lived in Port Charles, she was involved with me at first." He could tell that Spencer was shocked by the revelation. "When she met your father, she found him to be more... Interesting. I was, in her words, the lesser man because I was not the heir to the title."
Spencer opened his mouth to argue, but his mother's own words echoed in his memories. He'd shown interest in a young woman at the Academy and his mother had forbidden him to see her because she had no title or similar circumstance. She was, in Katherine's words, been 'unsuitable for his attentions.'
"Your father had been going through a difficult time, he believed that his half brother Lucky had been killed in a fire. Add to that the revelation that he might not have been fathered by Stavros."
He truly had Spencer's attention now. "Then who-"
"It was possible that I had been Nikolas' father. Katherine thought your father was the man for her."
"See?" Spencer shot up from his chair. "Then she didn't want him just for the title, right? She was with him.. when she thought you might be his father."
Stefan glared at Katherine's smug expression.
"There are a number of reasons she wanted him, Spencer. Your father is a handsome man, passionate in everything he does, and even if he was 'only' my son... your mother surmised that he would still be in the line of succession and I had no other children."
Helena turned to look at the other woman in the room. "You are truly a calculating little social climber, Katherine. Don't think that because you predicted one outcome like some charlatan in a turban that you can even begin to understand the inner workings of the Cassadine family."
"And it was during this time," he made sure that Spencer was looking directly at him, "that Katherine realized, before Nikolas even understood the depth of his feelings, that your father was deeply in love with Elizabeth."
"But she was in love with Lucky!"
"Yes, she was... but your father spent quite a bit of time with her before and after his brother's supposed death. When Lucky was gone they turned to each other to grieve, but your father's emotions were growing deeper with each passing day and while your mother was sharing his bed she was also plotting to drive a wedge between Nikolas and Elizabeth."
Katherine gasped in outrage. "That's not-"
"Don't you dare!" Stefan's normally reserved demeanor was fuming with anger. "Don't you try to deny it. You arranged for Elizabeth to go to the Deception offices and find you and Nikolas 'by chance.' Too many people know the truth for you to try and lie your way out of this one."
"Mother?" Spencer looked at his mother hoping she would deny it. Hoping she would tell him that Stefan was wrong... that there had been a misunderstanding. But all she did was lift her chin a fraction of an inch before she looked away from him. "No..." He somehow found a way to meet Stefan's eyes.
Seeing the change in Spencer's posture, the softening of the boy's abject rage into something akin to disillusionment, Stefan continued. "Elizabeth was hurt, not by Nikolas' actions, but by Katherine's determination to target her. And when your mother realized that she was pregnant, she used it to push Nikolas and Elizabeth further apart. But it was during that time that they realized how much they meant to each other."
"And," Helena interjected, "it was the first time that Katherine used you to secure her place in Nikolas' life." She spared Katherine a glance. "You told Nikolas he could either have Elizabeth in his life... or his child."
Spencer felt his heart stop in his chest. "Mother?"
Katherine studied her hands where they were folded in her lap.
"It was the first time," Helena admitted, "that I actually admired Elizabeth. She didn't ask Nikolas to choose. She didn't let him suffer through the agony of the choice. She walked away... for you."
"Over the years," Stefan continued, "through custody battles and blackmail, Elizabeth and your father have always put you first. They have tried to move on with other people." Stefan fixed his gaze on Katherine, daring her to meet him eye to eye. But she wouldn't. "And it may be worth noting that when your father was with 'other' women, the same threats were not repeated."
Spencer's mind was suddenly full with images. Emily, Courtney, Robin... Brooklyn... Gia. His mother had never said much about them, she had nearly ignored their presence. "What was so different about Elizabeth?" He looked from his mother, to Stefan, and finally Helena. "Why would my mother do that to her?"
Helena was the one to answer him. "You've seen them together, Spencer. I hope you're not as blind as your mother is vindictive."
It was true. He knew why his mother was so set on keeping them apart. When Elizabeth and Nikolas were together, his father was... happy. He smiled more, relaxed, and even laughed until he cried because of her.
"And what about the baby?"
Katherine's cold tone ran chills along Spencer's skin.
Stefan's own voice nearly crystallized with his cold fury. "Be very careful with your next words, Katherine."
Folding her arms over her chest with smug satisfaction, Katherine met the gaze of her former lover and flung one last barb. "Elizabeth's baby is still a little bastard. What difference does it matter if it survives if the family is going to turn its back on it like they've done to my son?"
Needing a moment to steel himself, Stefan drew in a long breath.
But it was Helena that spoke first. "The sheer amount of things that you don't understand about this family would crush you... and I welcome the opportunity to try. You don't deserve to know the truth, but for Nikolas' sake I will explain. And for you, Katherine, I will attempt to do it with small simple words."
Helena looked at Spencer. "Your father is already married."
Katherine's head snapped up to stare at the Cassadine matriarch. "What?"
Stefan's cell phone blared and he snatched it from his pocket, holding it up to his ear. "Chloe?" They could only hear the barest of noises as Stefan's wife answered him, her tone urgent. "I'll be right there." Closing the phone he met Helena's gaze. "I'm taking the helicopter."
She nodded. "Go, I'll finish up here."
Chloe and Nikolas paced along behind the nurses as they rolled Elizabeth's bed down the hall and toward the open Operating Room. As they walked they listened to the rumble of medical jargon as several doctors worked through the laundry list of things they would have to cover in surgery. There seemed to be some kind of argument over what to do first. Dr. Patrick Drake and Dr. Kelly Lee stopped just outside the door and met Nikolas at the door.
With Chloe's hand wrapped around his arm, he struggled to focus on what they were saying as he watched the nursing staff push the bed into the room beyond them.
He tried to focus on their words, tried to understand what they were saying... they kept the medical terminology to a minimum, but he didn't have to hear the words to understand how dire it was... he could see it on their faces.
Still, he held onto some shred of hope until he felt Kelly's hand on his shoulder and he met her concerned eyes. "It may come down to a choice, Nikolas. If it does, you're going to have to let us know... if you want us to save Elizabeth or the baby."
He didn't notice when Patrick and Kelly walked away, but it was the dull thud of the operating room door closing that brought him to his knees.
