;; Caveat Lector ;; If you guys can't guess by now, I loved Anna for the most part. And seeing her with Robin through the years and seeing what was starting to form between herself and Peter before the show fucked up a beautiful thing in that particular mother/son bonding plot, yeah.. I may or may not have gone a little overboard here but.. For the moment, it's kind of integral to the two finally sharing a reunion.
I want to thank you my kind anonymous reviewer from the bottom of my heart? I am so happy you're willing to see where this one takes us too. I hope you like where this is going. I'm going to be straight up with you, there is going to be zero Sonny with Brenda here. And my version of Brenda kind of tends to stay far away from Port Charles because of all the past drama. Like, she's realized she's not about it, so she remains in Italy. I truly hope you continue to enjoy this because I fully intend to really play to a hopefully better version of Peter for this.
Peter August was normally a man who thrived on schedule and deadlines. He wasn't the kind of man who slept through three, count 'em, three, resets of the snooze button on his alarm clock. But Peter simply hadn't wanted to wake up. To face a reality where all of that old pain from being pushed into leaving Carina behind back then faced him.
He wandered into the office, unkempt and grumpy. Lulu shoved the cup of coffee into his hands and Maxie sat out all the submissions that had poured in over the weekend plus the ones he'd already read and a breakdown of his itinerary for the day out in front of him.
"You look like hell." Lulu grimaced.
"Did you sleep in that suit, Peter?" Maxie questioned.
Both of their questions went unanswered and Peter shooed them from his office, shutting the door behind him and locking it firmly once he had. And then he sank down in the chair in front of his desk and while he had every intention of reading the printouts of the remaining submissions that is not what happened.
He found himself checking his email. Wondering if C.J Harlan would ever reply to him. When he didn't see a response, he realized that he needed his fix.
He went back to the folder he'd stored the entry in, away from all the others and he opened the file. Getting caught up in the story of a love gone wrong and frustrated all over again at it's lack of proper closure.
And just as he resigned himself to actually dig in and start sifting through the admissions Maxie had given him earlier that had come in over the weekend, his phone rang. He reached for it, picking it up.
It was his mother, Anna on the other end of the line. He frowned a little as it hit him that he'd been holding his breath. Hoping that maybe the mysterious writer of the piece that kickstarted all of this churning around in his head again might be calling him since he'd given his personal line in the email he sent.
"Did you do what I asked?"
"I did, Mom. I don't think it'll do any good though. I haven't heard anything back and it's been three days."
"Not everyone sits on top of their email like you do, either." Anna gave the gentle teasing and Peter sighed. Nodding in agreement. "Habit." he answered, reaching out to take a sip of his coffee and grimacing as soon as he realized that it had grown cold.
"I have a feeling. You're going to hear from them."
"What about you, hm? Find anything?"
Anna gave a soft laugh. " I may or may not be narrowing down a few possibilities on my end. If you can think of anything else on your end, it'd really be helpful."
Peter chuckled. Rubbing his chin in thought as he reclined his legs on the desk and leaned back in his chair. "Most of the stuff I do remember is sentimental."
Anna laughed softly. "Did you at least know her birthday? I'd hate to think my own son didn't take the time to at least learn the birthday of a woman he was apparently so taken by."
" April 1st." Peter answered, laughing quietly. "I teased her about it a lot."
Anna laughed again, going quiet. Peter assumed she was making note of it. "Her name was Carina Wylde."
Anna spoke up after a few seconds. "This might get me somewhere. I'm going to go try to figure this out. You.. Try reaching out again. Maybe the email you sent on Friday night went to the spam folder. If the writer is like most people, they probably don't bother looking in the spam folders."
Peter promised he would and after hanging up with his mother, he found himself doing it again...Opening the file that contained the story. Reading it for what had to be the thousandth time in a weekend.
Letting his mind wander. Trying to imagine what life might have been like if he'd chosen to stay and defy what Valentin expected from him at the time. If he hadn't believed the lies that Valentin fed him the day he left Carina behind.
Just before going home for the day, he tried to reach out to the writer of the piece a second time. And honestly, he didn't expect anything at all. This time he didn't phrase the email the way he had before. He'd had a few drinks by this point, so he was a little more… Open.
Instead of the formal email he sent off the Friday before, this time he went into depth. Typing out his own version of events. Explaining that while Aurora Media didn't typically touch anything to do with erotica or romantic in nature, he needed to know more about the story because he needed to know that there was hope for him. That maybe one day, he could have the closure he craved.
He hit send before he had the good common sense to go back through and censor anything out or edit it in any way. And then he locked up the suite of offices Aurora Media occupied on the top floor of the Metro Court and went home to that same empty house.
"What happened next, mommy?" Sophia's question broke through the story Carina had been telling her daughter before bed. Carina could've told her the truth, that the handsome knight left town and the princess never saw him again, but she didn't. She'd been doing a lot of reflecting as of late on the way things were left at a stalemate between herself and Henrik. She'd come to the realization that she wasn't happy with the way things were. She was tentatively planning on hiring someone to try finding Henrik for her again. Maybe this time she'd have a little luck.
Instead of telling her daughter the true and current ending to the little story she'd told her every night since Sophia was old enough to demand storytime before bed, she did what she normally did. She couldn't be the one who shattered the illusion of happily ever after for Sophia, she didn't have the heart.
"Well, sweetie, they found each other again. That handsome prince came right up to her window and climbed up to her room. And then he swept her off her feet and away." Carina finished the story, nuzzling her nose against her daughters. Sophia giggled, smiling with a dreamy and faraway look in her eyes.
"Momma?"
"Yeah, angel cakes?"
"Where's my daddy?"
The question caught Carina totally out of left field. She'd realized that at some point, Sophia was logically going to ask it, of course, she just hadn't been expecting that point to be quite so soon. She took a deep breath and sighed. "He got lost, angel cakes. But maybe we'll find him again someday."
The idea cemented itself in her head then. Even if the end result wasn't one she desired or longed for, she was going to try again to find Henrik. Because more than her own closure was at stake. Henrik might not accept their daughter, but at least he couldn't say she'd never tried to tell him.
"What'd he look like?"
"Oh sweetie. He was gorgeous. You have his eyes. And that little grin." Carina hugged her daughter against her. "Do you want to see him?"
Sophia nodded vigorously, smiling. "Please, momma?"
"Okay, give me just a second. I'll go grab my scrapbook and I'll come right back, okay? Then you have to go to bed, angel-cake."
"Okay, momma. I sleepy anyway. Nonna promised she was gonna take me out to ride horses tomorrow and she always goes early. So I gotta sleep."
"You do, sweetie." Carina laughed softly, lingering to stroke her daughter's soft dark brown hair before slipping out of the bed Sophia slept in and wandering through the bathroom that separated their rooms, into her own room. She walked into her closet and stepped up onto some luggage, tugging down an old scrapbook that she looked at now and then, especially when missing him hit her harder than usual. It had been a lot lately.
She spotted the box of notes they'd written back and forth and she reached for it, pulling it down from the shelf. And she wandered back into her daughter's room, sitting down on the bed. Opening the scrapbook and flipping through it.
"There. That's your daddy."
"Oh mommy, he is handsome." Sophia sighed. Carina smiled softly. "Hey.. Do you want this picture?"
Sophia nodded, making dark curls bounce a little in her excitement. Carina opened the protective film over the page and slipped the picture out, grabbing a frame from Sophia's nightstand. Tucking the photo of her father in next to the photo currently housed in the frame, which was one of Brenda, Alec, Sophia and Carina taken on Sophia's second birthday. Sophia's face was covered in strawberry icing.
"There you go, angel-cake."
Sophia held out her little hands to take the picture and Carina smiled as she hugged the framed photos against her like she did every time she picked up the silver frame. Then Sophia yawned again and Carina brushed her lips to her daughter's forehead, reaching out to turn off the unicorn shaped lamp.
"Night, angel-cake."
"Night, momma." Sophia answered quietly.
Carina wandered back into her own room and flopped across her king sized bed. Staring at the ceiling for about an hour before slipping out of bed and down the hall, into the office she shared with her mother, Brenda. She grabbed the laptop and wandered back down the hall and into her room, plugging the laptop in.
And once she was on the internet, she pulled up Google. Searching for private investigators who might be able to help her even begin attempting to find Henrik so she could reach out.
She sent off a few emails to different investigators at random, one of them being a new firm out of her mother's original hometown, Port Charles. Simply because it was a place her mother was familiar with and one of the names on the homepage, Jason Morgan, was probably the one person she knew her mother at least partially trusted. If it were the same person. She also chose the agency in question because of a heated discussion she overheard Henrik and the man named Valentin having about the location way back then.
After she'd done that, she checked her email.
And nearly choked on the sip of water she'd taken when she saw an official email from Aurora Media, the company she'd entered the writing contest with her piece about her love story with Henrik.
As warm brown eyes scanned the email, they widened. She gasped softly at the man's impassioned words about his own similar situation years ago. The way he described the woman he once loved. The way he made no secret of the fact that he'd never stopped loving her. The hidden plea for just an ounce of closure.
The one thing she didn't have to offer up because she didn't have it on her end for her situation.
But there was something about the way this man, this Peter August, there was something about the way he wrote that reminded her of the short stories penned privately between herself and Henrik, her beloved first love.
She wiped the back of her hand against her cheek when she felt the warmth of a wet tear trickling down, moved by the situation he presented to her from his own point of view. And she took a few deep breaths and started to write out a response email.
As she closed it out, reassuring him that hopefully, his situation didn't have such a tragic open ending, imploring him to do whatever it took to find the woman he evidently loved so dearly, she left her personal cell phone number with the caveat that if he needed someone to talk to that understood how it felt, he was welcome to call.
And then she laughed at herself for still being every bit the starry-eyed hopeless romantic she'd always been. Because she clearly needed to grow up and learn that the world isn't so kind. The world will chew you up and spit you out barely breathing.
,, you won't hear another word from the man." she dismissed what she'd just done as she closed the top to her laptop firmly and sat it on her nightstand. Pushing the email exchange out of mind.
Not realizing that rather than sending the email she'd responded with from her official 'writers/work' email that she'd entered with but her personal email. cbarrett outlook.
He'd been waiting on literal pins and needles. He kept telling himself that the writer of the piece that had resonated so deeply with him wasn't going to respond. That he needed to just leave it alone.
That if anything, the impassioned and slight drunken rambling nature of the second email was probably just a little too personal. But it happened on the rare occasion that he over-indulged in alcohol. And he'd definitely done that the night before.
He just had to dull the hurt.
Hearing Valentin confess and laugh about it after he'd gone to Pentonville on a whim and cornered him in with what he thought might've happened between himself and Carina back then hadn't given him any sort of inner peace. It only made the pain resonate so much deeper.
His cell phone dinged to indicate a new email. And before Peter could stop himself, he was rolling over in the king sized bed in his bedroom and grabbing for the phone. Racing to open it up with his heart doing a thousand little microscopic flutters as he did.
A brow raised at the unfamiliar email address and he opened it, thinking spam slipped past a filter. As he read the email it became crystal clear that it hadn't. That apparently, the writer of the piece had simply switched emails when she responded.
He jotted down the email to send to his mom later and he kept reading. Stomach churning the further into reading the email he got. Particularly when the sender detailed her current feelings and the overall sense of hopelessness she obviously felt and tried to hide. She told him that he needed to find this woman he loved so much. That she was going to try to find the man that the piece had been written about for about the sixth time in years. She admitted that she'd sent letter after letter to the last address she had for him but they all got returned to sender. This particular detail got his attention because earlier in the evening, during his visit to Valentin at Pentonville to drag the truth out of the man, Valentin gloated about having went above and beyond to make it seem as if he wanted nothing more to do with Carina and he'd done it by sending all the letters she wrote to him back addressed return to sender.
Peter's heart raced a little and he sat up in bed. Too awake now to attempt sleeping. There was too much on his mind between what Valentin revealed earlier in the day and what this email response from the writer of the submission that jumpstarted all of this for Peter all over again in the first place.
Peter started to go back through the email, jotting down everything that stood out and matched up with something he'd been told earlier by a gloating Valentin. By the time he finished dissecting the email, he took a few shaky breaths.
It was too damn late to call his mom, the last thing he wanted to do was drag her out of bed. But first thing in the morning he was going to go over and he was going to let her read the letter. Because if what Valentin hinted at was true, he didn't want to waste another second.
He wanted his closure. He wanted to look her in the eyes again at last. He wanted to lay it all on the line and let the chips fall where they fell. It was well past time to do so.
Especially if what Valentin hinted at about a possible child was even slightly possible. As badly as he wanted the very things Valentin robbed him of?
It had taken everything in Peter not to shatter the glass between them, reach through and strangle Valentin with his bare hands.
"Peter, what on Earth. It's 5 am."
"And I haven't slept all fucking night, mom." Peter admitted in an edgy tone. Anna stepped out of the doorway of her brownstone and Peter stepped in, sinking down to sit on her loveseat. Anna called out to Finn, "Better make that three cups, love." and then she turned her attention to her son.
"What happened?"
Peter held out the copy of the email response he'd gotten from the writer of the piece. And then he held out the list of things Valentin bragged about when he'd gone to Pentonville on his fact finding mission straight from work with enough liquor in him that he hadn't bothered holding his tongue when Valentin's bragging reached it's worst.
Anna eyed the email address. "I can use this."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Anna jotted down the email and then she turned her attention back to Peter. Robin wandered down and nodded to her half brother, mouthing to Anna "Is he okay? I've been worried."
Anna shrugged and sighed, turning her gaze back to Peter expectantly. Robin sank down to sit, sipping the coffee she'd poured herself as she listened intently to everything that had apparently been going on with her half brother.
"You have to find her, Peter."
"I'm going to. One way or another. If even half of what Valentin claims is true.. The thought that all this time.. I've been missing out. You know how much I wanted all of this. Both of you do no thanks to that one time I got drunk off my ass and told you both about her in the first place."
"We're going to find her, Peter. This is bad, okay? It is a mess but I know one thing if I know nothing else. I can help you find her and you can fix this." Anna gazed into her son's eyes, nodding her head in reassurance.
Peter took a few shaky breaths. "I shouldn't have gone to confront the asshole. I shouldn't have shown my hand. What if he gets out somehow? He's going to come after me because I turned on him."
"Worry about that if it ever happens. For now you focus on fixing this. Keep reaching out to the writer. Keep a connection because I have a feeling son… Carina and the writer are one and the same."
"Me too, Mom."
"Is anyone gonna maybe let me read what started all this?" Robin wondered aloud, leading Peter to pull out his cell phone and find where he'd saved it to his phone to refer back to.
"Not a word, mom." Peter muttered, shooting Anna a look when she gave him a teasing soft laugh. "I'm not saying anythin, son. Not a word."
Robin took her half brother's phone and started to read. Sitting back in her chair. Fidgeting a little at the really intense parts. The details of the night shared between the lovers that were ultimately torn apart.
When she finished, she took a few shaky breaths. Held his phone back out to him and then said quietly, "One.. You need to sign her. I know Aurora has a firm no fly with romance but lord have mercy, Peter.. That's.. I need to read more of that. Two.. I did not want nor did I need to know any of that, especially if this is about you like you think it might be. Just.. Gross? You're my brother. I'm gonna put that part of the story into a black box and pitch it out in the bay. Third… I knew you were a softie, I freakin knew it." Robin teased, smirking up at her half brother with her hand on her hip.
"I am not. Carina was literally my only soft spot back then. How do you think Valentin was able to coerce me into the shit he managed to coerce me into, sis?"
Robin stuck out her tongue and muttered quietly, "Still a softie." in teasing.
"Okay you two. Robin, don't antagonize your little brother.. And wow, I never thought I'd say that sentence to my two grown adult children." Anna laughed, giving them both a soft and loving gaze.
"You go up and shower. Leave the suit outside of the door and I'll.. do something with it to straighten it. Then go into work. Because you're going to be late. I'm going straight to my laptop with everything you've just given me because I think when the writer sent the response from a different email, this might be a huge break."
Peter did as instructed and Anna wandered into the kitchen, taking a cup of coffee as her husband Hamilton Finn held it out to her, smirking as he did so. "You're just not gonna leave it alone and take an actual vacation are you, love?"
"Not when so much is at stake."
"If you need to vent, babe.. Come in to the office and find me, yeah?"
Anna rose to tiptoe, brushing a kiss to her husband's lips. "Don't I always? Go on now, you're going to be late for work and I need silence so I can get focused."
Hamilton chuckled. Kissing her back and grabbing his blazer and keys, stepping out of the brownstone.
And Anna Devane sat down at her laptop in the office she shared with her husband with a laser focus and one goal in mind.
Somehow, she was going to serve Valentin Cassadine the ultimate fuck you. She was going to unravel the raveled and tangled mess the man made of her son's life and by god, she was going to see to it that everything got fixed. Because between Valentin and Faison, Peter had been through far more than anyone should've ever had to go through.
He wasn't perfect, he wasn't always the best man, but he wasn't deserving of the things he'd had shoved onto him throughout his life. And this was the one thing she could fix for her son to make up for the way things had shaken down back then. By god, as a mother, she was hell bent to fix it.