Journeylove- Thank you for the kind words and praise. I like to think that through all the angst I put the characters through, I can still keep it somewhat amusing at times.

Story-

Carly approached Ric, the pain still apparent on her face. She would never forget or forgive him for the time that he stole from her and her family. Those months that she was kept in the panic room, the months that Morgan was without the familiar voices of his family, all because of one man, one man who was a member of that same family regardless of how much they all tried to believe otherwise. She grabbed Ric's shoulder and dug her nails into his shirt. She wanted his attention, if she managed to get it through pain then that was just a bonus. "Where the hell do you get off saying that stuff to Sonny?" It seemed like both of his siblings were on the rampage to tell Sonny just how horrible he was as a father. Carly knew differently, and she wouldn't let anyone make Sonny think otherwise. Not Courtney, and certainly not Ric.

"I was only telling him the truth," Ric commented. "Now I suggest that you take your hand off of me, it's very bad form to assault someone when you're in the police station."

Carly sneered, "I won't let you try and get in his head, Ric."

"I didn't have to try, Carly," Ric countered. "Everything that I said to Sonny was what he needed to hear. Damian needs the support that we can give him."

"Sonny can give him all the support he needs. Damian doesn't need you."

"What about you?"

Carly shook her head, "I don't have anything to do with this, and don't even attempt to make it look like I do."

"You never made it anything but obvious that you didn't care for Sonny's illegitimate son, Carly," Ric subtly began to interrogate her. "Sonny thinks that I have something to gain from seeing Damian inside a prison cell, but why hasn't he even bothered to look at you? I may have done a lot of things, but I never made him a target. You, on the other hand, have."

"You're the one that claimed that you wanted to help Damian."

"I do," Ric confirmed it to Carly. "And if I can see that someone else was involved with the situation, I can get Damian off." Ric knew that Carly had nothing to do with the dock scene directly, she wasn't that sinister, at least not in public. But he also kenw that there was no love loss between her and his nephew. If anyone in Port Charles had a substantial gain from Damian being in prison, it was her. He would be out of their lives and she could return to the normalcy that kept her so happy in the past. "If you love Sonny like you claim you do, you would see that having his son in here is only putting him through emotional hell and you would do something to help."

"I'm here, aren't I?" Carly asked sarcastically. "Besides, Damian and I are getting along much better now."

"Maybe you were just trying to put up a face right before the things that you had planned went down to make yourself look like less of a suspect." Ric thought about it, he would have done the same thing.

"You can't pin this on me, Ric, no matter how hard you try."

"I'm not even trying to incriminate you. I'm just trying to help my nephew."

Lucky came up, having seen Ric belittle his cousin with very little reason. Lucky and Carly weren't the closest cousins on the planet, but Spencer's always presented a united front when one of them was under attack. Much as she would try to deny it at times, Carly was a Spencer. "Maybe you should start looking somewhere else, Ric," Lucky stood next to Carly. "She says that she didn't have anything to do with what happened and we've got nothing that states otherwise."

"I can fight my own battles, Lucky," Carly stated firmly.

"I know you can, Carly, but that doesn't mean that you have to."

Carly curbed her attitude and instead gave her cousin a warm smile, "Thanks."

Ric rolled his eyes, "Just as dysfunctional as ever."

"You should be one to talk," Carly shot back.

"You know, Carly, I'm not even the one that you need to be worrying about right now. If Sonny even thinks for a minute that you had something to do with this he's going to throw you out and you'll never see your children again. Right now you're in his good graces, but we've all seen just how easily you can fall out of them." Without giving Carly ample time to mount a counter-insult, Ric walked away. His mind drifted to Elizabeth. She would find out about Damian in time, but he wanted her to find out through him.

Carly couldn't believe that Ric would think that she had something to do with what had happened. But she shouldn't have been that surprised. Ric had done twisted things and fabricated stories to help his case before, he could do it in his sleep. She didn't like being under attack, though. "Even though we try and gloss over it, I can't help but wonder why that man is my brother-in-law."

"I can't understand what Elizabeth sees in him," Lucky mused somewhat sadly. Elizabeth had moved on, but at part of him hadn't. "Whatever he's got up his sleeve, I'll do what I can to make sure that you don't end up in his line of fire. That is... if you want me to help you on this one."

"Somehow I don't think that you're going to be giving me a choice."

Lucky laughed, "You're right. I'm not. Bad enough that one innocent person is getting stuck with the charges, I won't let it happen to someone else."

"We'll find a way to beat this, Lucky. I know that Sonny won't stand around and see that his son gets placed in jail for something that he didn't do."

"Carly... don't let him do anything too stupid. Right now Damian's under a very heavy amount of scrutiny from the people who think that he might have had something to do with it. If Sonny does something crazy the only thing that is going to happen is that he is going to discredit his son in the eyes of the people who think that he might not have done something. Sonny needs to play this one by the book. No matter how hard that is, you need to remind him of it. You're one of the only people that Sonny listens to. He won't listen to me and he sure as hell won't listen to Ric."

"I'll do what I can," Carly said. "The entire reason why I'm here is because I want to make sure that Sonny stays under control, but that isn't always easy. Sonny's entirely able to snap and not listen to anyone, not me, not Courtney, not even Jason. He doesn't want it to get that far, none of us do, but he can't stand around and feel like he's not doing anything, it only makes his fuse go down quicker."

"I can't turn a blind eye to something that Sonny does if it breaks the law, Carly," Lucky warned her. "I could lose my badge. Please don't let it get to the part where I might have to put my job in front of your family."

"I can't make any promises."

Lucky sighed, "It's always that way with Sonny, isn't it? Nobody can control him."

"Sonny doesn't like to be controlled. Did you enjoy it?"

Lucky turned away, not wanting to be reminded of his time as Helena's puppet.

Carly saw his silence and realized that she had gone too far, "I'm sorry, Lucky, that wasn't fair of me."

"Have you called Aunt Bobbie?" Lucky asked.

"My mother?" Carly thought about it, "Is everything okay with her? She's not hurt or anything, right?"

"She doesn't know about Damian then?" Lucky asked.

"Why would she know about what happened with Damian, it doesn't concern her."

"Carly, she thinks of him as one of her own grandchildren. They made a connection even when you were out to make sure that he got the hell out of Port Charles and never came back. She deserves to know what's going on."

Carly sighed, "She's probably working right now."

"She's gotten worse calls at work and managed," Lucky commented. It was a sad but true fact. "She'll be hurt either way, but if you're not the one that does it she'll feel even worse."

"I can't deal with everything at once, Lucky!" Carly leaned against a desk. "I don't want to have my own mother looking at me like I had something to do with this. I didn't! I realize how wrong I was about Damian when he first came and I'm trying to mend the damage that we did to one another for weeks."

"She'll believe you. I do." Lucky turned around, "Just think about it, Carly. I'll understand if you don't want to make the call, but give it a moment in your head."

Interrogation room-

Neither had moved in the moments that they had been looking at one another. Being together at last didn't make the situation any easier for either of them. Damian was happy to see his father, Sonny as happy to see his son, but there was that wall about what was going to be done next that neither was willing to scale.

"They... they're not treating you too bad, are they?" Sonny asked.

Damian shook his head, "I've only been in here for a few hours, dad. They haven't taken a nightstick to me or anything. That's a good thing, right?"

"I want you to know that I'm going to do whatever it takes to get you out of here," Sonny's voice showed that confidence that he often oozed. The feeling that he could do anything because of his name and power alone. It was false confidence at best. "I'm not going to let my boy go to prison for this."

"I'm innocent, they'll see that."

Sonny shook his head, "You need to stop thinking about this so optimistically. Sometimes people are blinded by your past and they can't see who you truly are."

"Did they do that with you, dad?" Damian asked. "You've been in court plenty of times, but you always managed to get away."

"The things that I did in order to get off weren't the methods that I want to take with you."

"So you admit that you're going to play this by my rules?" Damian was relieved that he had one that battle without even trying.

"I don't want to lose you, son," Sonny remarked sadly. "If I try to force you freedom, I will shatter everything that we've worked so hard for."

"Thank you for respecting my morals," Damian could see that his father was having difficulties with the limitations that had been placed. Damian couldn't help it, though. He wasn't going to toss his morals out for anything, not even his own freedom. Since it was a touchy subject at best, Damian changed it. "How are Michael and Morgan?"

"Courtney's still watching them. She wanted me to tell you that she believes in you."

Damian smiled, "It helps me adjust to my new surroundings. I look around me and I see bleak lifelessness. It reminds me of how I was in high school, actually. How I was before I came here..."

"Ric... says that you asked him to be your attorney."

"I did."

Sonny shook his head, "I can't let that happen, Damian. I can't let him destroy you like he will."

"Dad... Uncle Ric isn't going to do anything to me, I know it."

"He's lied to so many people before. Even people that aren't as trusting as you." Sonny had been fooled by him, once. Never again. "Let me get my own lawyers on this. They're paid enough, they'll find a way to get you free."

"I have to stay in here for awhile, don't I?"

Sonny nodded, "I don't think we can do anything in the situation that we're in right now. Baldwin worked pretty hard on this one, he's making it as iron clad as he possibly can."

"What are you going to tell Michael?"

"I... haven't thought about it."

"Maybe I should do it."

"Do you want to tell your little brother that you're in jail?"

"No," Damian admitted. "But I don't want him to find out by seeing it on the news or something else. It has to come from us, from his family."

"I'll do it when he gets up tomorrow. It should be me."

"Dad... I'll be fine. I can take care of myself."

"Maybe against the people that you dealt with in Los Angeles, but these people are my enemies. This is my fight, and they're throwing you into it."

"Story of my life," Damian remarked. "I'm always involved in something that I had nothing to do with." The uncomfortable silence lingered in the air once more. It was like everything between them had changed. Everything that they worked for so much was gone. Both wanted it back.