Morgan Household-

Dillon walked into his home, his true home, after spending too much time inside of the walls of what was once his 'home.' But, unlike living with Jason and Courtney, the Quartermaine mansion wasn't really a home to him in every sense of the word. It was just the place that he lived. He didn't feel welcome, he didn't feel wanted, he didn't feel like he actually wanted to be there, either. But with Jason and Courtney everything was different. He liked living in the penthouse. He liked being closer to the people that he cared about, his girlfriend and his best friend. Dillon enjoyed the freedom that came with being inside the Morgan home. They didn't expect him to report in at every hour. They didn't mind where he went. His mother would usually chastise him for even being seen at Kelly's, since it was a place that was altogether unfit for a boy of his standings. Everything was different now. Everything was better. Well, almost everything…

Dillon saw Jason walking back and forth, carrying ornaments and putting them into the boxes where they once came from. It wasn't long before Dillon realized what was going on… "No!"

Jason turned his cold eyes onto Dillon, "What do you mean, 'no?'"

"Please… not the tree!"

The older man sighed and closed his eyes. He didn't want a fight, that was partly why he was so glad that Dillon hadn't come back from wherever he was the night before. He could get everything done and there wouldn't be any hassle. It was a fools dream, apparently. "Dillon… we've been over this…"

"But… but…"

"I agreed to keep the tree until New Years Day. What's the date today?"

"January first…"

"Also known as?"

Dillon grumbles, "New Years Day…"

"I've kept my end of the bargain." Jason was hiding it well, as he always did, but a part of him, a small part, was sad to see the tree go. He would keep the short but sweet memories of decorating the tree with Courtney in his heart forever. Hopefully it would be a yearly tradition. "Now its time to keep yours…"

"But I don't want to!"

"Dillon…"

The teenager realized that his day was not going to go over very well. He had woken up in the Quartermaine mansion, the one place that he never wanted to be at any point in his life, and now, when he returned home, he was seeing a piece of his happiness being stripped down to nothing more than the pine needles, and there wasn't anything that he could do about it… or was there?

Courtney walked down the stairs, not having heard the commotion but wanting something to drink. She had slept comfortably in the arms of her husband after spending a magical night with him. It was the perfect way to start the year. "What's going on in here?"

"Courtney!" Dillon saw the one chance that he had at getting his wishes granted. Courtney, after all, was Jason's wife, therefore, she had leverage that Dillon could never hope to keep himself. "Jason's trying to crush my dreams!"

"I bought you a video camera for Christmas, how am I crushing your dreams?" The Dillon meter was going from one extreme to the other, quickly coming up on just being plain annoying. Jason respected Dillon's passion for things, since it seemed like Dillon was able to care about things in ways that Jason could never hope to again, but there were times when that passion could become overbearing.

"The tree…" he had to struggle for a reason, and he had to make it a good one, "it inspires me… yeah, that's it!"

"You're taking the tree down?" Courtney asked Jason.

"See?" Dillon also looked at Jason. "She doesn't want it to come down either…"

"He's right, I don't…"

"Told you."

"But," she continued, "I know that we can't have a Christmas tree here the whole year, the tree will be dead in a few days anyway, and a tree like this doesn't deserve to suffer. Besides, Jason said that it was going to go outside on the first, and today is the first. If we had an agreement with Jason, Dillon, we have to honor it."

"Looks like your plan didn't work," Jason continued to walk back and forth from the tree, getting the delicate ornaments off first before he would just toss all the tinsel inside the garbage.

"Don't think you get off that easy, Jason." Courtney finished walking down the stairs. "You could have asked if we wanted to help, you know? We put this tree up, we can put it down as a family…"

"I didn't want to wake you up, and Dillon wasn't here…"

It dawned on Courtney that her husband had a point. Dillon didn't come in at all. Courtney may have been a little too tipsy to realize it at the time, but her memory, however objective it may have been, ended up being true. Instantly the motherly aspect of Courtney Morgan kicked in. "Dillon, where were you? I know it was New Years Eve, but I expected you to come home sometime…"

With great regret in his voice, Dillon told them where he was. "I was at the mansion…"

"You stayed there?" Jason was amazed at Dillon's excuse.

"I didn't have a choice," the teenager sat down, looking over at the tree, it would be gone in a few minutes and he would be sad. "Georgie and I went to take Brook Lynn home because she was on the docks alone and then when we got there the snow ended up being so bad that we couldn't hope to make it back to town. So, Georgie and I were forced to campout at the mansion for the night."

"How was it?" Courtney knew how much Dillon hated being at the mansion now that he had finally been emancipated, but maybe it was a good visit. They were still his family, Jason's as well, and Courtney thought that they should always embrace the fact that they had that common bond with the Quartermaine's, at least to honor the spirit of Lila if nothing else.

"The usual. My mother wanted me to stay. She tried to manipulate me, made cracks at my girlfriend's expense… and has apparently decided to take up playing Jenga."

The two adults looked at one another before asking in mutual surprise, "Jenga?"

Dillon shrugged his shoulders, "Tracy Quartermaine has a few talents that she is a master at. One of them is building someone up and then breaking them down, just like the pile of Jenga blocks. She'd probably be really good at it."

The analogy worked for Courtney, but it wasn't very important. "Where's Georgie now?"

"I took her home once we were able to get the hell out of that place. I don't think she'll have many nightmares about it, but I could just be hoping for the best because I know how many nightmares I have about that place."

"It kept you safe," Courtney pointed out. "Your family didn't want to see you go out into the snow because they were afraid that something could happen to you. I'm not saying that they should have made your stay there so… problematic, but at least they cared enough to put your wellbeing in front of everything else, right?"

"I guess," he had to agree with that, however reluctantly he was to do it. "How was the party?"

Courtney smiled as she remembered everything that had gone on. From the little conversations to the dancing. The moments that she cherished from the night before would always bring her good warm feelings. "It was great."

"I'm just happy to get out of that suit."

Courtney slapped Jason on the arm, "You had a good time, admit it!"

The stoic enforcer lost his trademark blankness for a fleeting second. "I always have a good time with you, Courtney. Yesterday night was great, but that doesn't mean that I didn't hate being in that suit…"

"Maybe we should look into getting a custom suit made out of leather," Dillon suggested. "I mean, you love leather… so, it could work…" the silence that followed his statement gave him the hint that he needed. "Okay, fine, bad idea. Sorry, I'll shut up now."

"Are we in agreement with this whole tree situation?" Courtney asked.

"I'll do it," Dillon answered her. "But can I at least have a moment to say goodbye? She was such a good tree… so good to me."

"You have an unhealthy relationship with the tree…"

"The man who cherishes his leather jacket should not make cracks about someone else having strong emotional ties to an inanimate object," Dillon quickly countered. It was in jest. If Dillon had a jacket that was nearly as cool as Jason's he would probably go to sleep with it. Not that Jason went to sleep with it on. Maybe he did. Dillon could never really be too sure.

Dillon got up from the chair and made his way over to the tree. He looked at her, remembering everything that he went through to find her. His first Christmas in Port Charles without the stigma of being with the Quartermaine's. Maybe that was why he cared about the thing so much, because it was a symbol of him becoming his own person, away from the ever consuming shadow of everyone around him. He just wanted his first Christmas that was free to be perfect, and it was, but it couldn't last forever, Dillon knew that. He had a few reservations about the fact that things couldn't stay perfect forever, but he wasn't a little boy, he knew how the world worked. "You were good to me, Bessie…"

Jason's eyebrow went up, "You named the tree Bessie?"

"I couldn't think of anything else to name it…"

"Why not just call it the Christmas tree?"

"Because Bessie demanded that I give her a name…"

"Maybe they were right," Jason began, "maybe staying in the freezing snow as long as you did while you were looking for this tree managed to do something to your brain… mix the freezing cold weather with all the hair products you use and…"

Courtney giggled, "Jason, don't be mean."

"I wasn't being mean, I was trying to be funny…"

Courtney put her hand on his forehead, "Are you feeling okay?"

"What, I can't be funny?"

Courtney and Dillon answered at the same time, "No, not really." Jason had his moments, but the humor was usually unintentional. It didn't make it any less funny.

With the burden of getting rid of the tree heavy on his heart, Dillon knew that it was the choice that he needed to make. She had served her purpose, but it was time to let her go. He took one of the ornaments that he and Georgie had put on together and walked it over to the box. "The sooner we get this done the sooner we can vacuum the pine needles from the rug."

"You're doing that," Jason pointed out. "Bessie was your tree…"

"I don't remember that being part of the agreement."

"It was a clause in the contract," Courtney didn't want to vacuum the needles, she remembered doing it in Atlantic City. It wasn't fun. If she could avoid it, she would be happy. "Unspoken, but there."

Dillon glanced over at his two guardians, his family. "I feel like I've just been played…"

"Look at it this way, Dillon, you're not really a part of this family until you end up doing something that you don't really want to do. Think of this as your inauguration…" Courtney was just joking with the boy, but she did think of him as a member of her family.

The three members of the Morgan household continued to undress Bessie. Dillon kept his comments about how much he wanted to keep her around just for a little while longer to a minimum. They even ended up throwing tinsel at one another. Bessie seemed to bring them together both with her arrival and her departure. Maybe they should have named the tree Lila…