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His child. His son.
Jason Morgan the enforce had been shot, beaten, in fiery escapades and suffered the painful loss of love, but none of that could compare to the pain of having a son and not even being aware of it. He missed three years, three years of dirty diapers, knee scrapes, learning to crawl and talking. Three years of love, joy and happiness. Three years of memories.
The pain was like a knife twisting in his gut. He wasn't sure what was more painful. That he missed the first three years of his son's life or that the person who did this to him, who kept him from his own baby, was the only woman he ever trusted completely.
Elizabeth did this to him. Sonny did this to him. Hell if he wanted to be honest, he did this to himself. Wasn't he the one who walked away?
Looking at his son in Elizabeth's arms, his little toddler body pressed up against hers, he knew there would never be another moment when he would feel this much joy, this much pain. He finally had a son, finally had a child of his own, someone who he could read stories to and let them know they could be whatever the hell they wanted to be. Someone who wasn't even aware of who he was. His own son didn't know him. The joy, the pain.
Elizabeth watched the play of emotions as they flickered across Jason's face. Joy, love, pain, anger, sadness. All of them played out in those beautiful blue eyes before that stony façade came to surface and he was back to Jason Morgan again, the bad ass who just didn't give a damn. She hated the fact that she hurt him, hated the fact that she was the one who inflicted the pain; she was the one who kept this from him. She was the one who insisted that he never be told. When her son was born and placed into her arms she could think of a million reasons as to why Jason didn't need to know that they had created a child together.
In this moment, with the three of them standing so close together they could just reach out and touch another, Elizabeth couldn't think of one of those damn reasons.
She was a bitch, pure and simple, someone who kept things from the one man who never lied to her, never sugarcoated anything, always allowed her to be free. She kept from him the one thing he deserved to know, the one thing that would've made his life worth living. She was no better than Carly when Michael was born.
But that wasn't true either. Carly kept Michael away from A.J. because she knew that A.J. was a bastard and what the Quartermaine's could do to that poor child. Elizabeth didn't even know why she kept Jason's son from him, just that she did, and this betrayal was worse than anything her and Sonny ever did together.
Elizabeth pressed her cheek against her son's head and could feel that he was dozing off. She knew that she should carry him upstairs and tuck him into bed but she wanted to hold on just a little bit longer. She wanted Jason to be able to drink in his son, memorize every feature on his face, every detail about him, straight down to his chubby fingers and toes.
Looking over his dark hair into Jason's eyes she could see the question, the one that burned deep inside her own soul. If Sonny were still alive, if Jason never returned, would she have ever told him that he had a precious little boy waiting for him in Port Charles?
Feeling uncomfortable under his intense icy glare, Elizabeth shifted her son in her arms, smiling softly when his eyes started to close and his mouth opened to produce a very large yawn.
"You ready to go back to bed, JJ?" she asked softly as she pressed a kiss to his forehead.
JJ, Jason mused, if he were around at the time of his birth his name definitely would not have been JJ.
Jason probably would've named his first born after Sonny, a way to honor his mentor and be able to give his child his own identity. But Elizabeth, he knew that she wouldn't want that. She would want his children to have his legacy and so she named their son Jason Morgan, Jr.
Jason's legacy.
He couldn't resist as he reached out and ran one rough, callous finger down the boy's cheek.
Jason's heart and soul.
Elizabeth moved JJ to her other hip, as the adorable child in her arms was quickly on his way to outgrowing her and averted her eyes from Jason.
"I need to put him to bed," she said quietly. "I'll be…"
"I'm coming with you," Jason said in a voice that brooked no argument. He motioned with his hand for her to lead the way.
Elizabeth stepped in front of him, one foot in front of the other, as climbed the stairs slowly, nibbling her lip along the way. She clung to her son, holding him as tightly as possible without disturbing his sleep. She knew a battle was on the horizon and she couldn't lose her baby boy, not after everything else.
Jason watched her as she made her way up the stairs and down the hall a little, stopping at the door next to the bathroom. She seemed scared, nervous as she nudged the door open all the way with the left side of her body. He couldn't help a smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. She had every right to be afraid; few people were still alive that had betrayed Jason Morgan.
She stepped into the room and turned to him, "Could you get the lights please?"
He nodded, even though he wasn't sure if she could see it in the dark, but she was able to pick her way through her son's room and make it safely over to the bed. Jason then stepped over the threshold, flicking on the lights and illuminating the large child's room. What he saw made him take a quick step back.
Motorcycles everywhere.
His son's walls were painted a pale blue with little motorcycles in different designs and sizes painted throughout. There were toy motorcycles in every shape and size scattered on his play desk and in his toy bins. His bed sheets and comforter bared the familiar orange and black marker of Harley Davidson. And when Elizabeth laid her son down on the flannel sheets Jason took note of how JJ reached out unconsciously for Elizabeth's bear friend Boris who was now decked out in a Harley Davidson tee shirt and leather jacket.
This was his son.
Jason tried to take in everything around him but when his eyes did a quick scan of the room they came to a halt above the bed. There was a painted portrait of a man on a motorcycle, his back facing the occupants of the room. Leather jacket and blue jeans were clear to him as was the black road that depicted his ride to nowhere.
Elizabeth didn't need to explain this painting. It was as clear as day. He was the man on the motorcycle and he was riding away from his own family.
Looking down at Elizabeth who was smiling as she finished tucking in her son he felt his heart fill with hate. Had he known about his child he would've stayed, he would've never gotten onto that bike and disappeared until Sonny finally tracked him down. He would've never left his own family.
Elizabeth finally looked up from JJ and saw the look on Jason's face. The storm clouds in his eyes, the anger that was usually reserved for men who tried to step into his territory. But that's what she was doing wasn't she? JJ was Jason's territory.
She followed his eyes and saw that there was looking at the painting she had done all those years ago, the morning that he had left town for good she thought. She wasn't sure what he was making of it but it had to be different than what she meant. She put it in JJ's room because he loved it so much. She couldn't deny her son, not when she denied his father the whole world.
She turned back to him, opening her mouth to speak but he was gone. Then she heard the loud pounding of boots on the stairs. He was leaving, ready to storm out but she couldn't let him, she had to at least try and explain.
Hurrying out the door of her son's room, she pulled it quietly closed behind her and met Jason downstairs as he was placing his hand on the doorknob of the penthouse.
"Please," she said. "Just let me say something."
"What the hell are you going to say?" he asked whipping around to face her. Pure anger, pure hatred was visible across his face.
Elizabeth preferred the icy glare.
"You took three years of my life, Elizabeth," he said. "Three years of my life that I could have been spending with my son you took them from me. Why? Why did you see fit, why the hell did everyone see fit to do that?"
"Not everyone knows," Elizabeth pleaded. She bit her lip and took a step back, knowing that was not the first thing she wanted to say to him.
"What does that mean?" Jason asked. "Do they think…?" His mind flipped back, to the way Carly was speaking, the way Carly was yelling. Carly telling Elizabeth that she and Sonny created something.
"They think its Sonny's son," he said quietly.
"We didn't tell anyone a damn thing," Elizabeth said. "People took it upon themselves to…"
"When did you move in with Sonny?" Jason asked.
Elizabeth looked at him curiously. She was sure they were going to get around to that point sometime but she didn't think that it would be tonight. She thought that JJ was priority.
"It's been a while," she said. "I don't exactly know…"
"When?" he asked. "I want you to lie to me, Elizabeth, because I can still tell. We still have that connection; it's lying upstairs asleep right now."
Elizabeth sucked in a deep breath and moved further away from. She missed her connection with Jason and wanted it back desperately but she did not want it to be through their son.
Was that her reason for not telling Jason?
She needed another drink.
Jason watched her head back over to the wet bar and wondered why he couldn't picture her and Sonny together. When something hurts, they just drank it away.
"It's been around four years," Elizabeth said shakily as she reached for Sonny's bourbon. Four long, exhausting, incredible years, she thought.
"I left this town four years ago," Jason said. "You didn't wait long did you?"
Elizabeth turned around towards him with fire in her eyes, "Sonny moved me in here, I did not have a choice and if you don't believe that you can ask anyone of the guards."
"Why?" Jason asked. "Because they've been honest with me? Because Max and Johnny and Francis told me that you and Sonny have been fucking and raising my child."
"Jason," Elizabeth said softly. Him cursing and getting angry at her, it wasn't something she was use to. She didn't like it. "I told you, they didn't know."
"How can't they know, Elizabeth?" he asked as he advanced towards her. "You take one good look at that child, one look into his eyes and you know that he's mine. You saw it the day he was born and yet you kept that from me. Did you keep it from Sonny as well?"
"Sonny and I didn't…."
Jason held up his hands, palms facing towards her, "I don't care what you and Sonny did or didn't do. I don't care about this business or this town or the liars that reside in it. I care about my son, one I wasn't even aware of until about an hour ago. One who I will be spending a lot more time with from now on, you can be sure of that."
He turned away from her and strode to the door, pushing passed a startled Francis and punching the elevator button with his fist. She wanted to run after him, to plead with him to listen, to not take her son away, to understand that what happened between her and Sonny wasn't meant to hurt him.
But how could she? He wouldn't believe anything she said right now. It was all too new, too raw. Nothing even made sense to her anymore. Looking back on the past four years, images flashed through her mind and she could picture Jason's face in all of them. The first time she and Sonny kissed, the birth of her baby, the first time her and Sonny made love, their first date, their whole life together. It all seemed happy and content when she was living through it, but if Jason lived through it with her she could see him slowly dying right in front of her eyes.
Taking a long sip of the warm liquid and then holding the glass of Sonny's bourbon against her heart, Elizabeth felt the tears flow quietly and freely wondering what the hell she had done.
He wanted to ride all night, to feel the wind rushing past him, screaming into his ears and erasing all else from his mind but he could no longer do that. Not since that night over six years ago when she climbed on the bike behind him and wrapped those tiny little arms around his waist. She ruined this as well. Being on the bike was like being with her.
He tried to escape it, he tried riding faster, on busy highways where the traffic would drown out the sound of her laughter but nothing worked. The first few years were heaven for him, when she was there with him physically and the memory of her arms around him made his ride back to Jake's alone a little bit easier. The past four years were hell. Her memory never went away.
Every time he straddle the metallic beast he could felt those arms back around him, that warm breath tickling the back of his neck, that infectious laughter ringing in his ears. She was always wanting to go faster, always wanting the cliff roads, always haunting him.
Pulling up into the back parking lot of Jake's he turned off the engine to the bike and looked up at the dark window that use to be his room. Hell she was even here. Visions of her in that damn black dress with those silky white gloves and caked on make up that made her seem ten years older, made her seem almost reachable.
He wanted to walk away, to turn his bike back on and go straight back to Louisiana. He hated dealing with her, hated the constant battle that was always him and Elizabeth. But this time around it was different, this time he had priorities, this time he had a son. So against his better judgment, and knowing that the only other place available to stay tonight was the Quartermaine owned PC Hotel, Jason made his way into the old bar and asked for an available room.
He should've known his old one was the only one available.
Forgoing a beer and wanting to sleep away the memories Jason trudged up the stairs, thinking of the time she came back to him, asking for those damn white gloves. She had wanted things to be different, she wished they could be friends, she swore she was in love with Lucky Spencer.
Damn her, damn him, damn everything.
Rubbing his hands over his face Jason tried to get all of the images out of his mind. The first time he saw her in Jake's all dolled up and looking for trouble, the first time he saw her cry that night when she talked about the man she loved and lost, the way her face looked after every motorcycle ride, the way her face fell when he first told her goodbye. The angel that leaned over him, begging him to live, the devil inside of her that made her walk away from him for Lucky Spencer and Zander Smith. The way she said his name after he rescued her from the crypt, the joy in her eyes when he handed her that postcard from Italy, the betrayal she felt when she found out that Sonny's death was faked, the tortured look he encountered tonight when she was faced with the awful truth of what she had done.
It all filtered together in his mind, one long, repetitious movie of Elizabeth Webber, and it never stopped. Her images followed him all over the United States, on the beaches in the Carolinas, out west in California and Arizona, across the world to the United Kingdom and even in the jungles of Africa.
The one place she never followed him was Italy. Jason couldn't bring himself to go back to the country that he loved when he heard her utter the words that one night in her studio. When she imagined Italy, she imagined it with him. Somewhere along the line he knew he felt the same way.
Pulling off his black tee shirt and tossing it over the wooden chair by the desk, Jason removed his gun from his waistband and slipped it beneath his pillow. The boots came off with a thud and he slipped under the covers, wishing for sleep to come fast.
He wished he could find a way to get past this; he wanted things to return to the way they were when it seemed to be just Elizabeth and him in this world. He knew that he could forgive her. He was Jason Morgan. He was the most forgiving person in the world.
He just didn't know how to let go of the hate.
"You already have a name," Sonny smiled, his dimples clearly visible.
"Have you seen him?" Elizabeth asked gazing down at her newborn son, "What other name could there be?"
Sonny looked at her curiously. This was the first time the doctor was allowing him to visit with Elizabeth or her new baby. Right up until the labor she was still deciding what she wanted to name the child. She didn't know want to know whether the baby was going to be a boy or a girl.
The tiny little tike seemed to wave his fist at Sonny and then yawned before opening his eyes and causing the mobster to take a slight step back. He now knew exactly what Elizabeth was talking about.
"Jason Morgan, Jr." she smiled as she kissed her son's fuzzy head. "JJ."
"Elizabeth…" Sonny said licking his lips. He could feel something twist in his heart when he stared into the infants blue eyes, something that was telling him this simply wasn't right. "Elizabeth, we have to…"
"No!" Elizabeth said furiously as she clung to her son. "You promised me Sonny, you swore."
"Can't you see him, Elizabeth?" Sonny asked. "This is Jason's child, Jason's own flesh and blood."
"Don't you think I know that?" she said more quietly when she noted JJ start to fuss. She rubbed his belly, a hazy memory of Jason telling her children can sense things drifted through her mind.
"My heart broke a little when the doctor handed me my baby, mine and Jason's baby," Elizabeth said. "I wanted him here with me Sonny, I still do but I can't."
"Just say the word…"
"We spent years of pushing and pulling," she continued. "We couldn't figure out how to work things out when it was just the two of us. Now there's JJ," she smiled as she looked down at her son once again. She simply couldn't get enough of him. "If Jason and I didn't work out…I couldn't put him through that. It would kill Jason. He walked away Sonny, in the end I guess you can say we both did but he needs to come back on his own. I can't force him. I can't use JJ as a reason. I know…I saw it in his eyes when he lost Michael. I won't do that to him."
"You are not Carly," Sonny said.
"And he is not the same Jason I met all those years ago," Elizabeth replied. "I am not the same Elizabeth either. We've all changed."
Sonny reached out and took her free hand, squeezing it gently, "He won't be able to forgive you for this. You know that, right?"
Elizabeth looked at the peaceful baby in her arms, pulling him closer to her heart. "It's a chance I have to take."
She jumped up startled and looked around, realizing that she was back in Port Charles, asleep on the Penthouse couch, wearing Sonny's dress shirt. He was dead and Jason was home.
Elizabeth brought the long, baggy sleeve up to her nose and inhaled Sonny's scent. He was right, he had warned her but she was reckless nonetheless. Now she was alone, surrounded only by the comfort of Sonny's home and his favorite purple dress shirt.
Hearing the clock striking in the kitchen, Elizabeth reached for her purse and pulled out her cell phone. It read five a.m. She pushed the small blanket aside and stood up, stretching the kinks out of her back. She had to get up and face the day, she thought as she made her way up the stairs.
JJ had to be woken up, breakfast needed to be made and she had to chose a casket to bury Sonny in.
Alexis stumbled down the stairs, typing her robe with one hand and reaching for the light switch with another. She winced as the bright lights attacked her eyes and cursed at whoever was knocking on her door at six in the morning.
"I'm coming," she yelled as she pulled the door open. She was startled as the person pushed right past her, into her penthouse. She was even more startled that it was him.
"Jason, when did you get back?"
"Last night and I need your help," he said, starting to pace in front of her fireplace. "I want, no, I need, to sue for full custody of my son."
That didn't startled Alexis.