Angle445- Thanks for the review! I always love it when new people review, not that I don't love it when longtime readers review. But, anyway, yeah… glad you liked the Journey part, there's another part coming up sometime later, maybe by Sunday, but after that I haven't written anything that is specifically Journey… or has either character in the couple on the page, really. That's something that I've found myself needing to work on, before, with Shadows, I was able to branch out more, but here I'm more contained to focusing on Damian than before, which isn't something that I really want. Of course, I intend on changing this, once the Christmas stuff is over and we get onto the actual drama there'll be more focus on other people, but for now, bear with me.

Joy- We're seeing the big softy of Jason Morgan on the show, too. It's a fascinating thing. We even got to see him shirtless… which is something I've never seen since I started watching, but have heard of. Now I can be content… I have to put up with all this NEm crap, but subtext of JaSam sex makes it better. But, back to the story, because the show has next to no impact on the story, since I want it to be that way. Yes, Jason loves the family, will do much for them, but he won't take pictures. Jason has his limits.

Story-

Morning, Corinthos Household-

As always, his dreams were haunting him, refusing to let him go, forcing him to remember parts of his life that he would rather forget. Before it was just her face. His mother's cold, lifeless face as she left him forever. Now it was less her face, and more of Lorenzo's face as the blood flowed from the chest wound, watching as his eyes glazed over and he slowly started to cough up blood. Then, he would see himself. He would see the look on his own face. The look of satisfaction, the look of pleasure. The look that scared him intensely.

"No!" Damian's eyes jarred themselves open as the memories threatened to take over his sanity, as they often did. Only when he was forced to wake up did he actually wake up, as if a part of his mind wanted to recall that part of his life. No matter how many times he told himself that he wanted to forget, maybe he was just lying to himself. Maybe he wanted to keep that memory fresh in his mind. Why else would he dream about it, night after night?

He wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead, but he could still feel it running down his arms. He curled up against the headboard, clutching the blanket against his chest as if it was some sort of security measure. He knew that it wasn't going to help, but he needed something, anything, to make him feel a little bit safer, if a piece of cloth worked in his favor, then so be it. Looking out the window, Damian could see that it had yet to stop snowing. What was once a weather occurrence that was filled with childlike curiosity had quickly become part of the daily tedium. He still liked the snow, but he was wondering when it would end, if it ever would. At least the sun still shined in California.

Staring at the numbers on his alarm clock as they blinked at him, taunting him with the time, Damian groaned and threw the covers off, the change in temperature quickly cooling the sweat that was stuck on his skin. He realized that ran even deeper down his body, not resting at his arms, his body was drenched in a light coating of the sweat of pain and anguish. He was not willing to risk going back to sleep. Damian was usually the type of person who could go back to sleep without much effort, but that had changed, with one fatal bullet.

Although he called the place his home, there was still something that was foreboding about the penthouse. Maybe it was because it was such a huge change from his home in Los Angeles, the place that he had spent his entire life living in until he moved away. He couldn't really be expected to just adjust to such a drastic change in scenery over the course of a few months, could he? Maybe he would never adjust, but at least he didn't hate the house.

Walking out of the bathroom, dressed and clean, the night's horrors wiped from his body, but not his mind, Damian realized that he didn't have any plans for the day. Break was hard on him. He didn't have to worry about going to school, he didn't have to worry about doing his homework, or studying for the next exam. He could relax, and relaxing was never something that he was particularly good at. Perhaps it was because he had never really given himself time to try it. There always seemed to be something that kept him from the bliss of relaxation, and it only got worse after he moved to Port Charles. If he wasn't worrying about meeting his father he was worrying about battling the moral ambiguity that Sonny lived by. If it wasn't that, it was Carly, or Michael, or Dillon, or Maxie… or anyone in between, and there was always the excess amount of time that he spent worrying about himself. He just wanted some calm in his life, and that seemed to be the farthest from attainable.

Sonny heard one of the doors open as he went through the records that had been presented to him at his request. It may have been early in the morning in Port Charles, but it was evening in some parts of the world where Sonny did business, and they wanted answers. They were impatient creatures, but he was the same way when he needed something to get done, that was the nature of the beast. He wasn't expecting anyone to be up, though. He had long since grown accustomed to sitting around the house alone for a few hours in the early morning. Even though he would likely never admit it, the truth was that he had started to like the time where he could be alone and reflect on both his triumphs and his tragedies.

As was often the case with Sonny, his children were the first people on his mind. The children that were alive and the children that weren't. He thought of the baby, the baby that he thought was his first child, and the way that the poor child and Lily were killed, by her own father, no less. He thought of the child that he and Carly lost, another son… they would have named him Morgan if he had been born. What would they have named Morgan if the first baby would have survived?

Sonny knew that brooding over the past, over that which couldn't be changed, did no good for anyone, but he couldn't help it. He only wished that all of his children, all of those that were conceived by him and even the one who wasn't, would have had their fair chance at life. He knew that he was a danger to his boys, no matter how much he tried to protect them there was always the unknown element. Would they go to Michael's school? Would they wait till Leticia took Morgan out to the park? Would they follow Damian while he was out with Maxie and take him out when he was alone? Each of his living children had almost been lost to him at one point or the other, and he never wanted to worry about losing them again, but he knew that with his life, with his choices, that wasn't going to be possible.

"Do you ever wish that things could have been different, dad?" Damian asked, not even saying hello to his father. It may have been rude, crass, but it was something that was bugging him and he wanted to get it out of his mind as fast as possible, for the sake of his sanity, among other things.

"There are always things that I wished I could have done differently, Damian," Sonny responded the only way he knew how to respond when it came to his oldest son, honestly. He had lied to Damian once, and it took a lot of work on both their parts to even find a way to function as a unit after that. Sonny wasn't going to risk alienating the boy again, not when they were slowly building a stronger relationship with each passing day. "There are things that everyone wishes they could have done differently, but it doesn't matter, does it? No matter what we wish, no matter how hard we try, we can't erase the past. Our mistakes keep us grounded, keep us from making the same mistakes again…"

"At least in theory," Damian had made some mistakes multiple times in his life, depending on his mother too much even after she was gone. But Sonny was right, making mistakes was the only way that a person could grow as a person. If it weren't for the mistakes that were made in the past they would be made in the present and they could be worse. Damian wanted to know if Sonny regretted his relationship with Ric, but he knew that it wasn't his place. What was between his father and his uncle was something that only they understood, only they could hope to solve. Damian could be the glue that held them together, if extremely loosely, but he couldn't bring them together any more than he already had.

"Why'd you ask?" Sonny wondered. It wasn't an odd question, especially from him. He was too smart for his own good, too honest, too inquisitive. They were all good traits in a lot of ways, but they were also traits that could get him in trouble.

"Because I needed some advice," Damian walked over and poured a glass of water. "And when I need some advice… guess what, I turn to my father. Amazing concept, isn't it?"

"I would think that you would be the last person to turn to me for any advice, given what I do, given what you do… how those two positions clash against each other, a lot."

"Conflicting sides can often find peace by working with the opposition, dad," Damian sat down. "That's often the easiest way that a problem is resolved, by talking to someone who you wouldn't normally talk to. It's been like that for a long time, finding common ground to base a somewhat healthy relationship on. We did it that way… we built up a relationship as father and son because of the way that we felt about Michael and Morgan."

"Are you saying that if I didn't have any other children we wouldn't be where we are right now?" Sonny didn't think about the chance that without younger children, his oldest child wouldn't see any reason to be around his own father. The realization wasn't one that he enjoyed making.

"I don't know," Damian was honest. "I want to say that we would find our way to one another regardless of if you had any children, because I'd still want a relationship with you, dad. I'd still want to be your son, I'd still want that one thing that had been denied to me for twenty years of my life… but it would probably be harder to reach that goal…"

"I want to know about you, son…"

"You know who I am, dad…"

"No, I don't," Sonny shook his head. "I know your name, I know your grandparents, I know your mother. I know the most basic things about you, Damian, but I don't know who you are inside… not really. I don't know what your favorite color is, what type of food you like… I don't know about any accidents that you had when you were a little boy, if you're allergic to anything. All these things that I know about Michael and Morgan I want to know about you."

"I'm right here, dad. If you have questions that you want to ask me, feel free. I'm not going anywhere…"

"Do you have a nickname?"

"No… well, mom used to call me 'baby.' But I think that I'm a little old for that now… and she's the only one who would get to call me that, because I'd always be her baby…" he threw his head back, "Sorry, that sounded insensitive. I'm not jealous because you have more children from someone that isn't my mother, dad. I know that you wouldn't have even had me if it weren't for the circumstances that came around when you met her, and I'm glad that I'm not your only child… because it's really not that much fun."

"Did you hate me… growing up?" Sonny's question could have had a painful response. Maybe he had asked the question before, and even though he would find himself getting an answer in a matter of moments he would probably ask over and over again until he died.

"It's funny… she wouldn't let me hate you," Damian remembered a time in his life when he was much younger, much more innocent, less sure of himself as a person. "I remember once, I think it was on one of my birthdays, or maybe after I graduated from junior high… something like that… anyway, I remember that I hated my father for not being there with me on that day. I told her how much I hated my father, and she looked at me with so much sadness in her eyes. You know what she said? She told me 'your father would love you if he had the chance, nothing would keep him from being with you if he knew.' And I believed her. You made an impression on my mother when you had sex with her, dad…"

"We didn't talk," Sonny remembered the moments where he and Ana conceived the child that would eventually become Damian. "She was crying the whole time, and I was doing my best not to look at her, not to see her eyes and know that I was doing something that went against something that I believed in…" Sonny was silent before he continued, "How could she have seen that I would have been there for you?"

"Maybe the fact that you didn't look at her, that you didn't see her as just part of your job, or worse, as a conquest, showed the part of you that nurtures the people that you care about," Damian couldn't dissect his mother's logic, but he could get ideas as to why things were the way that they were. "Besides, she was right, wasn't she? You know that you would have been there for me if you knew. We both do. So, after that… no, I didn't hate you, and when I thought that I might have, I remembered when she told me that, and it helped."

"Why didn't she ever try to look for me?"

"That's not a question that I can answer, dad," Damian wished he had an answer, but the truth was that he didn't. "Nobody can answer that but her, and she's gone, so we'll never know. Maybe it was my grandparents. My grandfather more than likely if that's the case. He probably didn't want you around her because of what you are."

"I can't say that I blame him."

"I'm sorry that he can't see beyond what you do, dad," Damian knew that Elias and Sonny would never be close, they'd never be friends, but he, ever the one for unity, didn't want that. "Sometimes he can be stubborn as a mule. Guess you're not the only one that I get that trait from."

"Last question…"

"Shoot."

Sonny sat in the chair, "What do you want for Christmas? Anything at all, you name it, it's done. I don't care how much it costs, I've got to make up for twenty missed Christmases, after all…"

"Despite being a child of the 1980s, I won't collect on what is overdue, nor will I charge you any interest," Damian's love couldn't be bought, nor could his happiness. Sonny knew that, but he had to get his kid something for Christmas, not doing it would be mean, and Damian would be hurt by the lack of something under that tree, even if it was a simple trinket. "Here's the thing about presents, dad… they should come from the heart first and foremost. You know, I could ask for things that you could get me and that I would really like… but I'm not going to do that, because I don't believe in doing that. Whatever you get me will be fine… because I'll know that you put some thought into it."

"You love making this hard on me, don't you?"

Damian couldn't keep the smirk from showing on his face, "Look at it this way… I'm collecting on all the hell I would have put you through as a teenager… on that, yes, I will tack on some interest. Don't think about it, just let it come to you."

Sonny let the ideas come to him, one of them in particular seemed like a very good idea, but would he have the gall to do it? Maybe he would… hopefully he would.