Samsonlove- You'll remember a few chapters back I had some moment between Ned and his daughter. It wasn't big, although it was the title of the chapter. There will be more moments like that, I have one written that will come up eventually, and the events that are placed in motion below are going to have a way of spinning out towards the Ashton family and their connections to one another. Durant was supposed to die, but they decided to keep him around for the sake of the story. I, for one, am quite happy about that, because, as you know, I love John Durant. Yes, he's evil, but that's the point. That is why I love him.
Story-
Park, Gazebo-
Maxie waited as she was instructed to do, unknowing of what was going to happen, but feeling that it was something that was good regardless. She had met up with him shortly after school had ended for both of them. He had even told her about Durant meeting up with him again, and bringing for the knowledge that he had about Elias and his past. Maxie did what she could for her boyfriend, assuring him that everything was going to be all right, that everything was going to get solved and that nobody that he loved was going to get hurt in the process. She wanted him to believe it, but she knew that he wouldn't, because it was hard for someone to believe something that another person didn't believe. And Maxie didn't necessarily believe that it was true. She didn't even know if she wanted everything to turn out all right for Damian's family. It may have made her a bad person… but didn't they do bad things? Yes, Sonny was a good person, kind of, he wasn't very mean to her, ever. He always smiled, was always polite and made sure that she knew that she could always come to him when he needed something because of the connection that she shared with Damian, but so what. She also knew for a fact that Sonny was responsible for things that people thought he was. Maxie hadn't been let into the world that Damian found himself immersed in all that much, but she had seen enough. She had been at the center of one of the worst moments of her life, she had been used as bait to kill her boyfriend, and in the process Zander was almost killed as well. It was on that day that Maxie found out that the things that Sonny did weren't necessarily things that he did only when he had the best of intentions. She had seen the bodies of the guards that were on the ground. She had tried to take those images out of her head, but she had failed. They weren't that hard to feel sympathetic about, though. After all, if those men got what they wanted, Maxie and Damian would be dead, and so would Sonny, Jason and Damian's grandparents. In the end, that violence was necessary, but only that violence… and maybe what had happened to Alcazar.
The point that Maxie was trying to make with herself was that maybe it wouldn't have been that bad for her if Sonny and Jason did manage to go away, get put away from the things that they did. A horrible thought, one that she didn't particularly enjoy having, but she couldn't help but have it anyway. She wanted her boyfriend to be safe, to be happy, and she knew that he would be safer if his life wasn't always in peril because of the company that he kept, the family that he couldn't pull himself away from even if he wanted to. Plus, it would make things easier for her. Mac would be much more accepting of Damian in the end of John did manage to put away the people around Damian that Mac didn't trust, which happened to be Sonny and Jason. In some ways, Maxie was being selfish, she knew that, she couldn't deny it, but she also couldn't deny the fact that, while she may have been selfish, she didn't really regret it. Did that make her a bad person? Maybe a little, but, to Maxie, it also made her a person who just wanted things to be all right, and things would never be all right if they kept on going the way that they were.
She mulled the possibilities in her head, trying to take the good and the bad. One thing kept on flashing in her mind: the happiness factor. The most important thing that Damian needed, he needed to be happy, he needed something to keep him smiling, because if he didn't have it then he would never be able to do what he wanted to do. If Damian didn't have the support of the people around him, herself included, then he would falter. They were like his security net… and they were important to Maxie because of that as well. Even though it might have made them safer, it wouldn't have made him happier, she knew that. He loved his father, he loved Jason, he even had a fondness for the people that they hired. If all those people were taken out of his life, then it would crush him. It would slowly eat at him until he was gone. Until the Damian that she knew, the Damian that she fell in love with was just a thing of the past, completely unable to return. Maxie didn't want that.
He saw her sitting on the bench that was inside the gazebo, the soft lights that lined the outside of the construct brightly burning in the night sky, the yellow reflecting, shining off of her blonde hair. When he was younger he would have never thought that he would have fallen for someone who looked like Maxie. He had always pictured himself falling in love with someone that was more like him. There weren't many Caucasian females in East LA, and even the ones who were there tended to shy away from the people that were around them, people like him and his family. Cultural melting pot… that was what America was supposed to be to everyone, but, in the end, it wasn't nearly as pretty as it looked on paper. No, it was far from that, it was extremely ugly.
Still, Damian was happy with the person that he had fallen in love with, and why wouldn't he be? He wasn't going to let the color of Maxie's skin, or her race get in the way of how he felt. It wasn't like he was mandated to keep it in the 'family.' Adella, his paternal grandmother, a woman who he would never meet despite the urge that he had to know her, had done it with Mike, it was a part of who he was. He wasn't limited, biologically, when it came to race. Why then should he have been limited socially by race? There wasn't an answer that anyone could give him that he would accept, because a good answer didn't exist. Anyone who thought that people should allow themselves to be shaped by something so stupid as structure, which wasn't even structure if a person looked at it was not the kind of person that Damian wanted to be.
"I come bearing gifts," Damian took a few steps up into the gazebo. They were alone, just the two of them and the clear Port Charles night, sitting underneath the gazebo. It held a lot of memories for him, and for her as well.
"They smell great…"
"Well, when my grandfather gets a request from me to cook up something special for me and my girlfriend, he tends to listen. He's good like that, always willing and able to help me out when I need it."
"I'll have to thank Mike the next time that I see him," Maxie replied as she moved her head up, the light illuminating her pale but beautiful eyes. Even before she knew that she would be involved with Mike on a more personal level, Maxie had always cared about him. He was a good person, someone that she knew would be there for people when they needed a crying shoulder.
Damian sat down next to her, placing the food on the ground, still kept in the containers and held in the plastic bag with Kelly's logo emblazoned upon it. He placed his hand on her knee gently, "I'm sure that he would say that you being with me is thanks enough…"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He smiled, "Just that my family knows how much you mean to me, how much I love being with you. They all love the fact that you're here for me whenever I need someone to talk with, someone who isn't tied directly with the people who I'm related to, someone who doesn't… who isn't involved with everything that goes on around me."
"Should you really be talking to the daughter of the police commissioner about things that happen around Sonny and Jason?" Maxie asked, not trying to sound rude, but really just needing an answer. Would she lie to her father to protect her boyfriend? Probably. If he asked her if Damian was the one who killed Lorenzo, she would, but that was another circumstance, once that was completely out of Damian's control. If it were something else, maybe then she would have a crisis of faith.
"It doesn't have to be about that, though. It can be about anything, and I know that you'll listen, I know that you won't tell me what I want to hear, that you'll be honest with me. Sometimes I think that the people around me, my family, they can't treat me like I'm not one of the children. I'm almost as old as my Aunt Courtney, I'm in college, I'm an intern, but they still all look at me like I'm Sonny's child, and that I'm something of an outsider. In a lot of ways it's true, but I still can't help but not want to feel like I'm being punished for something that I have no control over."
"You know that if they need you for anything, they'll ask, right?"
"Of course I know…"
"Good," Maxie placed a hand on his cheek before she pulled away. "Can we eat now, I'm starving?"
"Yes, Maxie, we can eat now." Damian dug into the bag and pulled out the twin containers, both labeled. "Here, this one's for you… I figured I should feed you before you started your shift tonight, that way you don't have to worry about eating that hospital food, or at least attempting to digest it…"
Maxie opened the container and instantly the smell of the cheeseburger filled her nose, mixed in with the crisp smell of the fries, sending her into an instant state of mindless bliss. "I thought you said that Sonny and Carly were out for dinner, and that Michael and Morgan were with Jason and Courtney at the zoo…"
"They are."
"So then why are we eating here?"
"Because I don't want to take the chance of someone coming around if we're at my house. Besides, you know what your father would say if he ever found out that you were inside the home of Sonny Corinthos. Mac barely tolerates me right now because I try and keep you away from the life that he thinks is just going to end up killing you, but if I betray that trust, do something that will make me seem like I'm putting you in danger, then he never will forgive me. I want your father on my side, Maxie. I really do."
"So do I," she replied, taking a few of the fries and sticking them in her mouth, after dousing them with the packets of ketchup that she had received. They never gave her enough.
"Besides, this spot has a lot of memories for the two of us… doesn't it?" He looked at her, placing the box on the bench again. "I know how much it means to us, to our relationship… I just figured that we would eat here, if we weren't eating at Kelly's already."
"You're so romantic."
"I try…"
Maxie was feeling wonderful, like everything between them was perfect, and then she remembered that everything between them wasn't perfect, because she couldn't trust him enough. She wanted to get that part of her life over with. She didn't want to be 'that' girlfriend, the one who needed to spend every waking moment with her boyfriend because she was afraid of what he would do without her. She had been that girl before, with Kyle, she didn't like being that girl. "Can I tell you something?"
"You can tell me anything, Maxie. You know that."
"You might not like hearing it…"
"It doesn't matter, if you think that you should tell me, then you should tell me. I want you to feel like you can tell me anything, because I feel like I can tell you anything…"
She sighed, hoping that everything would still be all right between the two of them once she confessed her sins. "The other day, when you called me and told me that you were going to take Brook to eat because she was depressed and she needed someone to talk with… I… I ended up sneaking into Kelly's before you got there and I hung out, hidden from the two of you."
"You were spying on me?"
"Not on you!" Maxie pointed out as fiercely as she could. "I trust you, Damian. Honestly, I trust you more than I've ever trusted anyone before in my life, even my sister. It's Brook Lynn that I don't trust. I know the way that she looks at you. You know that she has a crush on you…"
"I can't help that she feels that way about me, Maxie. I've told her time and time again that you're the only person that I want in my life, that I care about her, but the feelings that I have for her are not the same as the feelings that I have for you. I love Brook as a friend, I love you as everything that a friend can't be… I just wish you could believe that."
"I do… I do believe it."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. No more second guessing, all right? I hated keeping that a secret from you, Damian. I hated trying to keep the guilt away… I needed to know that nothing was going to happen between the two of you, and now that I know for sure, I'll back off…"
"I'm glad. Really, that makes me happier than you could imagine. I don't want you to think that I'm going to do something that will hurt you, because I don't want to ever do something that will hurt you."
"I don't think you ever will." And she meant it. He didn't want to hurt her because he cared about her so much, that kind of love wasn't the kind of love that came around very often. She needed to realize just how special she was for having it, and it may have taken her awhile, but she finally did.
Road-
Lois didn't want to go back to the Quartermaine Mansion. He would be there, and he would say something else, something that was so stupid that it would set her off again. Who the hell was he to even call her parenting skills into question? Yeah, sure, she and her daughter weren't exactly the Gilmore Girls, but they were close, closer than she was with her mother, in some ways.
The woman heard a song on the radio station that she was listening to, a song that she didn't want to hear. A song that they used to love. "Thank you, God, for reminding me of that jackass at such a horrible time. Nice to know that you're getting a kick out of my misery, too." Seeing that there was nobody on the road, Lois took her attention from the road for just a moment to fiddle with the radio station and look for something else. Her eyes were stained with tears. Then, she heard a loud sound, as if something had popped. Her tire. The car lost control for a second. Lois tried to hit the breaks, but all she saw was a fence pole, and then she screamed, and then there was nothing.
