It shouldn't have surprised him that the instinct was still there. The one that snuck up on him in late 1999, the one that followed him where he went, the one that had him running around the streets of Port Charles late into the evening.

Find Elizabeth, make sure she's safe.

It took him over an hour to disentangle himself from Carly. He tried to simply drop her off at the Brownstone with Bobbie but Carly would have none of that. She wanted to go back to her apartment, wanted him to come in and talk, she need him right now, needed a friend.

Jason assured her that he was there for her, that he loved her and wanted to help her as much as he could but right now he had to take care of something else.

Accusations about Elizabeth started flying as did the tears and the years of pain. The insecure Carly was starting to resurface, believing that everyone was choosing someone else over her.

After many assurances that he would be back tomorrow after the mass so they could spend time together Jason rushed out and started his search for Elizabeth.

She wasn't at the studio, she wasn't at the Penthouse, she wasn't at Kelly's. He finally called the guards and after much hesitant Max told her she was fine, she was at the Port Charles Hotel and Johnny was on her.

Jason didn't believe a word of it and he was on his way over now, in a wrinkled suit.

He didn't care that she was still angry at the world, that she was now flaunting her obvious engagement to Port Charles Crime Boss to the whole town, that the look of love in her eyes when she mentioned Sonny's name was like a hard kick to his gut.

All his thoughts were centered on the fact that Elizabeth needed him.

He hated it but he was there nonetheless.

Stepping off of the elevator onto the top floor of the hotel Jason came face to face with a stern Johnny. He was centered right in front of Elizabeth's penthouse suite and didn't look to be budging.

Not even for his boss.

"I don't think that is a good idea now," Johnny said quietly.

"She needs someone to talk to," Jason said and advance towards the door.

Johnny side stepped him however and Jason sighed, running his fingers through his hair. He didn't want to be standing in the middle of a hallway explaining why Elizabeth needed him at this moment. He just wanted his guard to trust him and let him in.

Obviously Johnny was more concerned about Elizabeth than he was about Jason.

Jason was beginning to see what happened when you walk away from your life one too many times.

"Johnny I can't explain this to you right now," Jason said, "But you know I wouldn't be here if I didn't think she needed me." He ran his hand over his face and looked at the tall Irish man in front of him. "Has she been drinking again?"

Johnny gave a slight nod as his only indication and Jason knew that he had to get in there to stop her before she made things even worse. He saw what it did to AJ and Alan Quartermaine and what happened to Sonny when he had a few to many.

He'd be damn if that happened to Elizabeth.

Johnny moved away from the door, stepping towards the elevator, "You won't leave her alone tonight?"

Jason didn't want to stay, there were voices in his head telling him right now to run, but it was obvious that everyone was feeling the strain of Sonny's loss and Johnny too needed to deal with it as well.

His dedication to Sonny was what kept him standing watch over Elizabeth. Or was it vice versa?

"I'll stay," Jason managed to say quietly.

As the elevator doors opened for Johnny, he looked back at Jason, a sad, distant look in his eye. "She's on her second bottle."

Then he was gone, leaving Jason standing there with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He was the one left to save her.

She was a mess.

For the first time in a very long time Elizabeth was ready to admit that she was out of control. Her world was spinning and she didn't know how to stop it. But she had to, not for herself, but for JJ. That little boy was all she had left and she was not going to take him down with her.

So, she took another sip.

That's how the story played out for the past two hours. She had a half of bottle of vodka on the way over to the hotel, somehow managed to reserve a room, stumbled into the bar for some hard shots and demanded a bottle of bourbon to go.

Sonny's delicious bourbon that burned at first but now settled in her empty stomach, leaving a warm tingling feeling.

She was going to be sick tomorrow, probably later tonight even, but she didn't care. When she faced those lying bastards at the service and burial tomorrow she didn't want to feel a thing. She didn't want them to know that it hurt her that they didn't care.

So she drank and then drank some more, thanking Sonny for giving her the tolerance, thanking the lord for providing such wonderful alcohol grains and thanking herself for being brave Elizabeth.

She lived through a rape, a kidnapping, and being shot, she would certainly live through this. If liquor was going to be her aid than so be it.

No one else seemed to want the job.

Elizabeth stood up, stumbling slightly and then plopped back down. She released her hold on the bottle long enough to pull off her strappy shoes. After a five minute struggle the things slid off her feet and were thrown in different directions across the room.

She'd find them tomorrow when she needed them, that one last time when she was going to say goodbye to Sonny, tonight, she was just going to drink everything away.

Standing up again, more stable this time, she had every intent on making her way over to the balcony but the mumbling outside of her door stopped her.

It was quiet and the buzzing in her head couldn't make out the persons disturbing her private party. One of them had to be Johnny, the other one was…

Then she saw a handle on the door knob, someone was trying to twist it, trying to come in. That meant that Johnny had let the person come through.

That meant that it was only one person.

Anger written all over her face, Elizabeth made her way to the door in her stocking feet and threw it open.

"Get out, I don't care what you managed to tell him, you are not wanted here, go."

He didn't listen to her and Jason started to move over the threshold but she tried to push him back with her tiny hands, one of which was holding on tightly to an expensive bottle of bourbon.

He tried to take it from her but she was more determined to keep that than have him out of her room. She yanked her hands away and stumbled away from him, making her way back over to the couch.

If he wasn't going to leave she was just going to ignore him.

Obviously her brain was very foggy because she seemingly forgot that one does not ignore Jason Morgan.

"I think you've had enough," he said as he closed the door behind him.

She heard the click but it didn't register as she took another long drink. How much before you were entirely too wasted and had to go to the hospital. Maybe she should stop and just go to bed. Maybe that would make him leave.

"Elizabeth…"

"I really don't want you here," she said as she placed the bottle on the glass table in front of her, "I'm done, so you can leave now."

He sighed as he moved towards her. Drunk and depressed, always difficult to deal with someone like that. It was hard when he saw Sonny in this position but looking at Elizabeth the way she looked now was tearing his heart apart.

Her dress was wrinkled, her stocking her a small runner at the calve and her face was smeared with make up. There were dark black circles under her eyes and along her cheeks, revealing running mascara and obvious tear tracks. But it was the eyes that did him in.

The pain, the grief, the sorrow, the anger. So much for a woman so young. He wished that he could somehow stop it but how do you stop something that you're the partial cause of? He tried by holding his hand out to her, one in which she smacked away.

"I told you to leave," she said. "Your good at that you know?"

That stung but he bit back any retort that came to mind. She was in pain, she needed a friend, she needed him.

"Tonight, I could see how painful it was for you…"

"Could you?" she asked. "Because from my vantage point I saw the disgust in your eyes. I saw your face when you realized what I said, what this meant," she said wiggling her left finger in front of him, "I knew that if Sonny weren't dead at that moment you would've killed him on the spot."

"Don't…"

"Put words in your mouth?" Elizabeth said. "I know your mourning too Jason. I k now how torn you are, I know that you can't deal with the fact that you love and hate the man who is sitting in a freaking bronze urn right now waiting to be buried under six inches of dirt tomorrow."

"Elizabeth…"

"I know how everyone feels, how much everyone does and doesn't care," she said raging on. "And I'm sure the reason it took you two hours to get here revolved around Carly Corinthos, the woman who has the right to mourn."

"No one said…" he was trying to get word in edgewise but she wasn't allowing in. Every time he moved towards her she took two steps back.

It felt as if they were thrown back in time, doing the dance they were so familiar with.

"No one has to say it, Jason," she scoffed. "She was the one he was still married to; she was the one who should have been doing everything, not the mistress he paraded around town with. It didn't matter that they're marriage ended a long time ago, all that held them together was a piece of paper and Sonny wanted it that way until I had my license."

Jason wanted to stop her, wanted to tell her that he wasn't here to argue but what she said made his eyebrows come together, 'What?"

"My first case was going to be the divorce of Sonny Corinthos from Carly Spencer."

"He was going rub salt in her wounds," Jason said with a sarcastic laugh, "That was Sonny alright. The bastard."

"Don't you do that," Elizabeth said wagging another finger at him, "You have no right…"

"What right do you have?" he asked. "Didn't you just tell me that you were his mistress? He became engaged to you before he was a free man? How much longer were you going to wait, Elizabeth? Did it ever occur to you that he was holding off because he might want to go back to Carly? That's them, it's what they do."

The pain was back, with the sorrow. He had hurt her. He let his anger get the best of him again. It wasn't something that he did around her, ever, but over the last two days that's all they did with one another, argue and snap. It was hell.

"Look, I didn't mean…"

"It's what we did, Jase," she said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "We pushed and pulled and came back year after year after year until you finally decided you had enough and walked out on me."

That hit a nerve, that hit the one place he never wanted to return to, "You were the one who decided you were leaving first."

"You left me!" she screamed. "When I woke up that morning…"

"I simply chose to leave before you did!"

"…you didn't even give me the benefit of the doubt."

"You never told me about my son!"

"I wanted you to love me for me!"

Then they stopped the screaming, the bickering, the talking over one another. Round and round in circles is they way they seemed to go. As they stared at each other, with pain and hatred in their eyes, visions of how things use to be danced before their minds.

Needing each other, wanting each other, pushing the other away, pulling back, so many 'see you laters', one silent goodbye, too much history to forget and too painful to remember.

Jason wanted to reach out to her, tell her how he felt all those years ago but right now it wasn't something that she could hear. She chose to move on, without him, raising his son with another man. Even if he loved her back then he couldn't tell her how he felt about her now. He didn't know if it were possible to love and hate someone at the same exact time.

He feared that was the emotion he was feeling at this moment.

Elizabeth looked away first, unable to glare into those piercing eyes. If only she had admitted it that night, sometime between the moments of passion, if only she had told him how she truly felt, that she wasn't going to leave, maybe he would've stayed, maybe this would've never had happened. Maybe…

She couldn't live with maybes and she didn't regret her relationship with Sonny. She was sorry that it hurt Jason but she was not going to let him take that away from her, not without a fight.

"You asked me what possible reason I had for keeping JJ from you," she said quietly. He looked like he wanted to say something, like he didn't want to hear her excuse but she was going to give it to him anyway, "JJ was conceived in a moment, in a night of passion and…love for me, a night that I will never forget. But no matter who started it Jason, no matter how the hell it happened you walked out on me the next day, the next morning, before I even had the chance to…" she stopped and took a trembling breathe as she felt tears start to fill her eyes once again. She was so tired of crying but she felt the need to continue. "The small note that you left, the one that simply read 'See you later' let me know that we still weren't finished, but with no word from Sonny and then finding out about JJ, I…I didn't want you back here for him, I wanted you back here for me."

She saw the anger rise up, the hatred that he had been holding back was starting to surface again and she needed to hold it bay for as long as she could.

"It may have been selfish and you may hate me for it but at the time it was something that I needed to do," she continued. "I am sorry that when you resurfaced and made a phone call to Sonny a year later the first thing he didn't mention was your child. It wasn't his place and I am the one to blame, not him."

She walked closer to him, wishing that she could pick that bottle back up, wishing the pain that was coming back would just go away, knowing she had to face this now and hating it all the same.

"Curse him for screwing me, for making me a part of his life but I kept your son from you, no one else," she said. "Hate me for it, I want you to. I look into his eyes everyday and I hate myself, but simply remember that you walked out."

Her words were like a bucket of ice thrown on Jason's face and he tried to remember that he loved Sonny, that his best friend, his mentor cared for this woman in front of him right now and for that reason he had to respect her. The Elizabeth that he had met long ago didn't seem to exist anymore.

"I don't know what's happened to you," he said as his eyes raked her body.

"I grew up," she snorted.

"You certainly changed," he stated simply, "Did it ever occur to you why I walked out, Elizabeth? I was so tired of listening to you say that you couldn't see me anymore. I was so tired of being pulled between you and Zander and you and Lucky. I was so tired of watching the back of you disappear from my life so I took the situation in my hands and I walked out first. I saw your face that night and every time after…every time you still had that determined look on your face, like it was the last time, like we were through and I was tired of it, tired of being used."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed at him, "I never…"

"Lie to yourself," Jason said. "But don't even think about trying to lie to me."

Then, just as he did four years ago, Jason turned around and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her waist, knowing that she felt hallow when she first entered the room hours ago and now she felt emptier still. She needed something to stop this spinning, to stop this disaster that was happening right before her eyes. She needed something to ease this horrible pain.

Looking over at the table she saw the bottle of bourbon in its upright place, begging for another sip, promising to numb the pain.

Walking past the couch and down the hallway that led to the bedroom Elizabeth opted for sleep, hoping that at least Sonny could comfort her in her dreams.

Jason's hands lingered on the door handle as his forehead rested against the smooth wooden surface. The sweet tortuous dance with Elizabeth Webber would never end. He recalled finding out about Elizabeth and Sonny and knowing that he could simply ride away from it all once he buried his longtime friend and mentor.

But there was no more walking away this time, he and Elizabeth were forever linked by a tiny little boy that would need his father more than ever.

Running his fingers slightly down the door Jason knew that Elizabeth would need JJ's father as well.

So he sat down in front of the door, his back and head resting against it, his legs propped up in front of him with his wrists resting against his knees.

Just like he promised Johnny, he wasn't going anywhere tonight.