Jounreylove- Yeah, Brook did have a hard time without Ned, so her anger towards both her mother and especially her father is quite justified. Also glad to see that you're enjoying the other parts.

Story-

Kelly's-

Like clockwork, the boy returned to the diner where everything seemed to end up. It was the great convergent point of Port Charles. No matter what the problem was, it would eventually find a part of itself going to Kelly's diner. Who was Kelly, anyway? Maybe she was some sort of voodoo priestess who put a curse on her diner to make it seem important and special. There were worse curses in the world, that much was certain. Nonetheless, it had good fries.

There were a few people who were inside the diner, but it was still relatively early in the morning. Kelly's didn't have the biggest breakfast rush in the world, but it did have a good lunch and dinner rush that made up for the somewhat lax breakfast hours. They all looked at him and he wondered if they knew, wondered if they were looking at him and thinking that he had become impure. He paid them as little attention as he could. He had lost his purity of spirit long before he went to bed with Maxie.

Damian's eyes glanced at all the tables and when he was finished he let out a small, shallow, sigh of relief. He didn't want to see Bobbie. Not yet. He didn't want to tell her that the man that was Carly's father was not the best person in the world. John Durant was, in fact, one of the worst. Damian was almost certain that Carly was John's daughter. He could see things that they shared, similar traits. The immediate hostility against him upon their first meeting seemed inconsequential, there were other things, physical things, that put the two of them together.

The young man wasn't sure how Bobbie would take it. She had spent so long worrying about the secret getting out that she eventually cracked under the pressure and got him, someone who she wasn't even related to, into the mess. Bobbie wanted John to be a good man, Damian did as well, but the fact was quite different from the fiction and he wasn't sure how she would take it. She'd gone through enough… she didn't need any extra stress, and he didn't want to give her any.

Penny was working at the counter instead of Elizabeth, and he could hear someone in the distance working the fire. It was probably his grandfather. He didn't really want to see Mike, either. Mike might have seen through his attempts at playing it cool. Grandfathers were like that, weren't they? Elias could see through him like a book. It was impossible to keep a secret from that man, at least in person. Maybe he could get away with it on the phone, but he wasn't ready to take that chance.

"Did you come to see Mike?" Penny asked. She didn't know Damian that well, but she was almost certain that anyone who had Mike Corbin's blood in their veins couldn't be a very bad person. She was almost certain that Sonny's image was entirely based on the opinion of the media and not really like that. Although she had seen a few times when they were together. Sonny and Mike seemed to have some tension about them that almost smothered the room. It wasn't Penny's place to ask, so she didn't.

"No, I just came to have some alone time. Do me a favor, don't tell him I'm here, okay?"

"Yeah… sure…"

Damian walked into the stairwell and up the small flight of stairs into the upper level of Kelly's. It wasn't a bad place to live. He would have been perfectly happy living in the apartment that was still rented out to him. It was a good place to just get away from everything, everyone. The perfect place to have some time alone to himself, which was what he wanted and needed at that moment.

He picked the key out of his pocket and placed it in the lock, unlocking the door and pushing it open. Damian wasn't expecting anything to go wrong, but the moment he walked in he found himself jumping back and making a very noticeable gasp.

Ric and Elizabeth looked at each other with wide eyes before they looked at him. Both were fully clothed, but they still felt somewhat dirty about what they had done. "Damian…"

Damian put his arms up, not wanting to hear Ric's excuses. His Uncle was a lawyer, he was good at telling stories. "I'm just going to leave the two of you alone…"

"Damian!" Elizabeth got out of bed, showing that there was nothing going on between them aside from the love that she had in her heart. "Please, just listen."

"You're adults, you don't need to explain anything to me…"

"We didn't do anything!" Elizabeth pointed out. "We just needed a place to stay for the night."

"And your apartments were out of the question because?"

"We got snowed in," Ric didn't like the fact that such a thing ended up being the truth, but he couldn't do anything about it. That was what happened. He didn't have the power to change the weather, no matter how much he wanted to do something, anything, to get rid of the damned snow the night before.

"You got snowed in here, too?"

"It was bad," Ric said with a nod. "I imagine that you didn't get back home from New York…"

"How'd you know I was in New York?"

"I still worked with Mac yesterday," he replied with a sly smile. "He told me plenty of things…"

"He wasn't mean to you, was he?"

"Define mean."

The young man shook his head, "Don't worry about it. Look, I know that the two of you probably don't want me to be here…"

"Why would you say that?" Elizabeth wondered. She loved Damian dearly. She didn't want him to think like she wanted to push him away. She knew for a fact that Ric didn't. The boy was pretty much the only person who had any amount of shared blood in his veins that didn't try and throw Ric out the moment he got within a ten mile radius.

"Because I'm old enough to know that in situations like this, unless you're a really strange person, an audience isn't really desired."

"I told you," Ric stood up, pushing his shoes aside, "nothing happened."

"And I believe you both, really, I do, but you still probably wanted some time alone. Someone might as well get some use out of the room…"

"Damian, stop," Elizabeth called to him. "We… Ric, needs to tell you something…"

Ric looked over at her, unsure of if it was the time and place to tell him that they were going to be married the next day. "Are you sure about this? There are better times to tell him…"

"You didn't arrest my father last night, did you?"

"No…"

"Uncle Jason?"

"No…"

"Carly?"

"Nobody got arrested!" Ric finally stated. He saw Elizabeth giggling. "What, you think this is funny?"

"I do."

"Yeah?" Ric grinned at her. "I know other ways to make you laugh."

"Remember me?" Damian piped in, "The audience that you guys apparently wanted? Yeah, the audience doesn't mind displays of affection… but innuendos, not so much."

"Sorry," Ric muttered. "Look, kid… you know that we're getting married… but yesterday we decided that we wanted to get married tomorrow."

"Really?"

Elizabeth nodded. "We didn't want to wait, but we figured that New Years Eve and New Years day are probably pretty big days when it comes to the whole getting married thing."

"Some people want to make sure they get married on a Holiday, it makes memorizing their anniversary easier."

Elizabeth glanced at him, "You said that was part of the reason why you wanted to get married tomorrow. It would be easier on you!"

"You'll note that I didn't say anything that made me separate from the clump of people who do things like this for that very reason…"

"You… you're a crafty little bugger."

"I didn't graduate from an Ivy league school without picking up a few tricks…"

"Subtext!"

The two lovebirds were once more halted by the young man, who seemed to be more jittery than usual. Ric spoke again, this time changing the subject completely, "Are you all right? You seem a little tense…"

"I just spent a twenty-four hour period in a city with millions of people…"

"You were born in Los Angeles, you've almost always spent time in a city with millions of people…"

"Maybe the smog got to me… it's not Los Angeles smog, its special smog."

"Damian…"

"I'm fine," he said stubbornly. "I promise you both that I'm okay. I'm just a little tired. I didn't get much sleep…"

"You were with your girlfriend, alone, for the first time…"

"Uncle Ric, you keep on going with that train of thought and I'm going to make sure that you don't even make it to your wedding day…"

Ric smiled once more. He had often wondered what it would be like to have a son, or a daughter. Children of any gender, really. Damian wasn't his child, but the boy was his nephew, and there were times when Ric couldn't help but think that he was taking a fatherly role in Damian's life.

"So…" Elizabeth continued the conversation. "When we get married we don't want a big ceremony or anything, but we need two witnesses…"

"You want me to be at your wedding?"

"It would mean a lot to me," Ric stood by Elizabeth, putting his hand on Damian's shoulder. "I didn't have family at my first wedding to Elizabeth, Damian, because nobody in my family really wanted to be there with me…"

"You mean so much to both of us," Elizabeth wrapped her arm around Ric's free arm. "If I knew that I would be marrying into your family when I met you that day you came down I would have been pretty happy… you're a wonderful person, we both want you there to celebrate with us."

"I can try and see if…"

"No," Ric shook his head. "I know what you're thinking, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for even thinking about it, but we both know that your father won't have any part of my wedding to Elizabeth. Neither will Michael, or anyone else. They don't like me… and while I hate that I can never redeem myself in their eyes I'm content with knowing that I'm doing everything I possibly can to make it seem like I'm a better person."

"He's your brother, he should be there…"

Ric chuckled, "Your father would just do something to undermine the beauty of my love with Elizabeth. There are times when I want Sonny around me, Damian, there are times when I wish that your father could be more than just an enemy to me. I would love to have him there if I knew that he could behave himself, but the fact of the matter is that we both know that isn't possible."

"Emily and Nikolas took off for Russia to spend their New Years, they won't be back for awhile," it was sad that she couldn't have the four musketeers with her on her wedding day once more, but she would manage to get over it. "Lucky's already agreed to be there… if you come, we're good."

"You can even bring your girlfriend along if you like… there's cake for plenty."

He looked at the two of them. They had gone through so much, but he knew that they could find a way to be happy. "I'll be there…"