Robert looked out the window of Anna's ICU as Robin gave Emma a reassuring hug and sent her on with Aunt Bobbie. Once again, it became clear to him just how much the girl was his child. Emma had just been brought in to say good-bye to her "Lub," how he wished he could keep her at this age of innocence where Luv was Lub and Valentine's were Valemtimes and there was no loss yet in her world, and yet Robin was certain she'd be alright. There were more pressing matters. How he hoped for both of their sakes that Robin realized sooner than he had that the matters of children are always more pressing than they seem. The little girl was still a baby at the end of the day, and she was going to need her Mommy to make this better for her. He couldn't watch his daughter repeat his same mistakes and instead turned to Anna, "Luv, you're leaving behind one hell of a challenge for us Scorpios to deal with here. How on Earth are Robin and I going to bring out our softer side without you? How are we going to nurture Emma without you? Hell, forget about her feelings. How on Earth are we going to manage that Devane wild streak that runs through the child? That glint in her eye is all you, sweetheart, all you. You know I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on you. I knew right then you were trouble. The way you got me to give you my chair, the way you laughed when I told you I was the boss. You had me where you wanted me from the first second and you knew it…"

"Any change?" Robin asked as she walked in, hoping against hope that the answer would be anything but what she knew it would be.

"Fever broke, but other than that no change. How's Emma?"

"Scared and confused, but she's too young to really get the magnitude of what's going on."

"She get's more than you think, Luv. Don't make the same mistakes I did. She needs your reassurance now more than ever."

"I know that Dad," Robin responded with the beginnings of annoyance in her voice, "but I know her, and she'll be fine. There'll be time when all is said and done to put things right for her. Mom doesn't have time on her side. This is where I need to be right now."

"We always think we have time, until we don't. You know your child, but don't find yourself thirty years from now looking at her as an adult and realizing just how many times you should have made a different choice. Just how many times you thought she was fine when she wasn't," Robert returned with a sincerity and genuine remorse that somehow managed to diffuse Robin's anger for the moment, although not her resolve.

"Let's just drop it for now Daddy, please," Robin answered much more gently than before, "What were you telling Mom right now?"

"Oh, I was just telling her how Emma has me wrapped around her little finger. It's a trick she inherited from your Mom. I was reminding her how she's called the shots from the moment I laid eyes on her. You should have seen her Robin. She was so impossibly young, but she was so sure of herself, or at least she was one hell of an actress. I didn't realize how young she was until our first time together. All of the sudden, Miss Thing became so unsure of herself. She actually needed me to assure her…"

Robin couldn't help but cringe. It was a reflex. She didn't know if she'd ever be grown up enough to deal with the fact that her parent's had a sex life. Perhaps, it was a consequence of "losing" them at thirteen. She'd been perpetually stuck in teenager mode when it came to them.

"…sorry, Luv," Robert found himself missing Anna more than ever in this moment. How he wished she was awake to banter with him and torture their daughter. He had to get back on track, back to happy memories, "I'll never forget how infuriating I found her. She just had this 'devil may care' confidence that clashed with my need to take the job seriously, not to mention the ability to distract me. I remember holding her in my arms as we danced in front of a group of DVX men and finding that I'd forgotten we were on a mission. It was only a split second, but no other woman had managed to get between me and the job like that, do you remember Anna? Do you remember how we danced? How somehow without either one of us noticing we stop playing a role and fell in love for real? Do you remember that first kiss? Or the moment we washed up on the beach in Italy? Do you remember our wedding day, Luv, do you? You were so beautiful. It was the beginning of you taking my breath away."

Robin loved hearing about how her parents had begun. She could remember asking Luv to tell her the stories time and time again before she knew that they were her parents, and she remembered asking her grandmother to continue telling her the stories she knew afterwards because Luv never seemed to want to go there after her first visit to Port Charles, much less after they moved. Robin could tell that remembering pained Anna, and hadn't pushed it. For some reason, she'd never thought to ask her father about that time other than some brief questions when they'd stayed in the same hotel her parents had honeymooned in. No time like the present, "So who fell first, Dad?"

"I did or at least I realized it first. Your mother has always been my equal as a spy if not my superior, and it's what's balanced us out, but for the longest time, she doubted herself as a woman. I think in part it was the age difference, and in other parts the fact that I could be so damn difficult. You know from personal experience that I don't do warm and mushy well, and your mother was so young that she really needed a bit of warmth and mushiness to believe in us, in herself, in the fact that a man could really truly love her. Then the fiasco with the DVX occurred, and I walked away. It took her quite a while to get her bearings after that; as a matter of fact, I don't think she really put herself back together when it came to me until she finally up the courage to call me out one Valentine's day."

At that point, Robin stopped him, "'91?"

"Yup, '91."

"What happened?"

"You don't want to know Luv," Robert couldn't help but chuckle, "You don' want to know."

Knowing her parents like she did, that chuckle told Robin all she need to know and would like to erase from her head, so she opted to drop it.

"Daddy, how are we going to get through this?"

"I don't know sweetheart. All I know is that your mother has been my whole world for over thirty years. She's the one person who was always willing to look past my shortcomings and love me for who I was. She's my true north, and I don't know how I'm going to get through a single day without her. I love you Robin, and I love Emma, but I don't know if I can do this, and I need you to know that no matter what happens in the future your mother and I have shared a one in a million kind of love, and the only person we've loved more is you."

"I know that Daddy, and I need you to know that she really has loved you and I know she still does, as much as she loved Uncle Duke, I know that a huge piece of her heart was still yours, she was just too scared to go for it. So she found a "nice" guy to love and to love her in return. You need to know that it was always you, and she wouldn't want to see you like this right now."

"There's just so much unsaid, Robin."

"Then tell her."

Robert couldn't hold back the sobs that wracked his body as he got up on the bed and took Anna in his arms, "I forgive you, baby. I forgave you the moment I saw you in Port Charles. I was just too damn proud to admit it. I'm so sorry, Luv. I'm so sorry…I'm sorry…"

"Fff….or….ggg…ive…" Robert was so caught up in his grief that he almost missed it, but Robin did not. She quickly placed a hand on her father's shoulder drawing his attention downward. Staring up at Robert were the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen.

"Anna?"

"Pa…tty…ca…ke…wro…ng…"

"He sure as hell was, Luv."

Later that night, Patrick Drake watched his family including his daughter sleep peacefully for the first time since this ordeal had started. Anna had a rough road ahead of her. She would need intensive physical, occupational, and speech therapy along with a drastic change in lifestyle, but she would pull through, thankfully they all would.

The End