Note:Posted in response to the Banner #1 Challenge at The Canvas.This is kind of different, so…yeah. It's kind of AU in that I combined aspects of GH-past with GH-present.
Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
Lulu adjusted her fluffy pink wings with a grimace. "I can't believe we were demoted. Man, this color-ranking system sucks! Now instead of white, we get pink. I feel like I took a bath in Pepto Bismol."
"It is pretty disgusting, isn't it?" Emily grumbled, fingering her glittery pink wand with a large star at the end. "I mean, look at this thing – tacky doesn't even begin to cover it."
Brenda rolled her dark eyes, adjusting her delicate tiara and putting on her pink silk slippers correctly. "Quit your bitching, you two – the sooner we do the job right, the sooner we get our normal fairy suits back. Are we ready?"
"As ready as we'll ever be," the lone blonde in the group muttered, picking up her satchel and securing it at her waist. "Who's got the pixie dust?"
"Me," Emily replied, handing her friend the silk pouch and watching as she quickly tucked it into her satchel. "I've got the wand and Bren, you've got the arrows, right?"
"Right," the brunette replied, securing the large archery bow to her back and counting her magic arrows. "Okay, we should have enough. Now, let's go over the plan again, because if we screw this up and get demoted again, we'll be wearing coral taffeta. And then I'm going to kill you two."
"If I don't kill myself first," Lulu muttered, swiping her blonde bangs out of her face. "Okay, who's the brains of this outfit? Who's gonna tell me what I'm expected to do this time?"
Brenda frowned when all eyes turned to her. "Why the hell am I the project manager?"
"Because we tried Emily's way and it both sucked and blew," Lulu reminded her. "No offense, Emmy."
"None taken," the redhead shrugged. "I mean, I did deserve that – I totally screwed up. Who knew that one accidental sprinkle of pixie dust would cause Patrick Drake to pursue Carly Corinthos?"
"And why is she still a Corinthos?" Lulu wondered aloud. "Didn't she divorce Rico Suave, like, forever ago?"
Brenda shrugged and pulled out a papyrus scroll and a quill pen. "Who knows? That woman's a serial bride. Okay, let's get this down on paper so we have a road map. The mission is pretty simple, after all."
"Get Patrick Drake to fall for Robin Scorpio," Lulu dictated, waiting as her fellow fairy quickly transcribed it. "And get Jason Morgan to fall for Elizabeth Webber."
"And let's try to stick to that, shall we?" Brenda asked, glaring in Emily's direction. "No more wasting our arrows on dogs."
The redhead grinned sheepishly. "What? I couldn't help it – Foster and Annabelle were meant to be."
Brenda rolled her dark eyes – she was going to wear them out that way, if she kept spending time with these two. "And Lulu, I don't even need to tell you that-"
"-I can't use my pixie dust on old people because it's like Viagra and it's totally gross," the blonde recited, her hands on her hips. "Fine. I get it – you can stop rubbing it in."
"Hey, you're not the one that was trapped in the same room as Eddie Quartermaine as he tried to hump that Heather Webber chick," Brenda retorted, pointing a barbed Arrow d'Amour dangerously close to the young blonde fairy's face. "So until you've had to burn your retinas out, Missy, I suggest you give it a rest."
"Okay, okay."
"Fine – take a look at this." Brenda extended the scroll toward them, waiting as they read her notes. "This is what is going on in Port Charles as far as our four clients are concerned. Since our last trip, Carly is out of the picture because she's involved with Jasper Jacks. Some love fairies actually do the job right, you know."
"Show-offs," Lulu muttered, resting her chin on Emily's shoulder so that she could get a better look. "Hey – Elizabeth went back to that Spencer loser? What! Eros didn't sanction that!"
"Oh, trust me, little Miss Webber did that all on her own," Brenda grimaced, thinking of the infuriatingly loyal young brunette that they had been assigned to. "Remember how we tried to shoot her with the arrow, only my aim was off so I only nicked her? Yeah, because of that, she was able to tell Jason that she wanted more than a friendship with him, but then ended up going back to her loser boyfriend."
"But the Scroll of Eros says that Jason and Elizabeth-"
"I know what the Scroll says," the brunette replied, running her hands through her hair in frustration. "But Elizabeth did this all on her own. Eros didn't allow this permanent-lock bullshit between her and Lucky to continue – in fact, Eros had decreed that it would end in 1999 after he supposedly died. But here we are, two years later, and she's doing this whole thing again on her own. It's an Eros-less relationship, trust me."
"And it's our job to get her to go back to Jason, right?" Emily rubbed her temples, trying to make sense of Brenda's scribbled notes.
"There's just one little problem."
Both Lulu and the redhead looked at their older friend curiously. "What's that?"
"…Jason kinda…left town."
The two younger fairies simply stared at her in shock before Lulu exploded. "He left? What do you mean, he left! He's not supposed to go anywhere! What the hell did the Archangel save him from the warehouse fire for if it wasn't for him to fulfill Eros' plan and get it on with Elizabeth!"
Brenda shrugged uncomfortably. "Eros and the others work in strange ways," she reminded the rookies. "And we can't question them. We can only do what we're told to do."
"So according to this," Emily started, pointing at the scroll, "we're supposed to get Jason back to Port Charles somehow."
"Check."
"And we're supposed to get Elizabeth to realize she doesn't love Lucky-Shmucky anymore."
"Check."
"And we're supposed to get the two of them back together."
"Check."
"And we're supposed to get Robin to open up her heart and let someone in after Stone's death."
"Check."
"…And we're supposed to get Patrick to stop being such a horndog."
"Check…"
"…Mate," Lulu finished for her friend, smirking at the brunette. "Honestly, Bren, who are we kidding? Those morons just can't get their act together – we've been trying for months-"
"We're just not trying hard enough!"
"-And they're still doing their same old stupid dance around each other-"
"Again, if we could just do our jobs right-"
"-And they're impossible!" Lulu finished, stomping her foot on the cloud. "We haven't even gotten either of them to kiss each other! Instead, Elizabeth's off overcompensating with that Lucky loser, Jason's making good use of his right hand, Robin's cloistering herself up in the hospital, and Patrick's making out with anything that moves! We're going to need some help with this."
"Well, we're not going to get it," Brenda finished in a tone of finality. Normally, she wasn't quite so uptight and unforgiving – in fact, she had a reputation among the rest of the fairies as being quite carefree and wild – but her two bumbling trainees were too simple-minded and hapless to do this right on their own. "It's just us and we're going to be kicked out of the program if we don't get this right. So we have no choice – got it?"
"Fine," Lulu and Emily sulked in unison, preparing to hop off the cloud and flutter down to the town of Port Charles. "Jeez, you'd think those morons down there could at least help us out – make our jobs a little easier."
"Since when is love supposed to be easy?" Brenda asked wryly, securing her bow as she hopped off first and led the way to their unsuspecting charges.
"Where the hell is that idiot?"
Emily and Lulu trailed quietly behind Brenda as the older fairy hovered over the state of New York, peering down at the terrain with her binoculars. The two exchanged nervous glances but said nothing in response. Brenda had been cursing Jason Morgan's name for the past ten minutes, as well as his ability to effectively evade not only the long arm of the law, but the pervasive power of love.
"You know, maybe he deserves to be alone with his right hand," the brunette snorted, leading the small group closer to the Canadian border as she continued to survey the landscape. "It would serve the neanderthal right."
"That's the same thing you said about Sonny Corinthos," Emily reminded her, "but Eros has him lined up for thirteen more women in one decade."
That bit of information shocked Lulu. "Thirteen? Oh, man, he's going to be so tired."
"He?" Brenda repeated with a snort. "What about the women? Ooh – there he is!" Without waiting for her team, she secured her binoculars around her neck and dove down to the small gas station where Jason Morgan was refilling his bike. "Hurry it up, you two."
Before long, the three of them were perched atop the filling station, leaning over the edge and watching as Jason filled up his tank.
"That's him, right – we're positive? Remember what happened when we thought that one other dude was Jason? Boy, did he have some explaining to do to his wife later."
"That's him," Lulu nodded. "I'd know that bod anywhere – rowr."
Emily rolled her eyes with a smirk. "Well, what do we do now? Conk him over the head? Slash his tires? Get Father Time to accelerate the next thunderstorm a bit? What?"
Brenda crossed her legs, her brow furrowed in thought. "No. Get out the wand."
Emily's eyes widened as she turned toward the group leader. "Now? We're going for the wand now? But I thought we'd wait and-"
"Look, this idiot is a real piece of work, okay?" Brenda replied, gesturing wildly at the enforcer. "He's trying to be all noble and crap and step out of the way because he thinks Elizabeth loves Lucky. He knows that Lucky will end up hurting her, but thinks that it will be better if he gets out of the picture because then Lucky won't go apeshit on her for seeing him. The further he gets, the more convinced he'll be. No – we need the wand. So gimme."
Wordlessly, Emily handed the pink wand over to Brenda without even protesting that it was her job to handle all love-related clunkings. The older fairy gracefully fluttered down until she was almost at even height with Jason, fluttering an inch or so above him. She licked her lips and looked up at her rookies, making sure that they were watching, before raising the wand up over her head.
As he set the gas hose back in its holster, Jason Morgan heard a rush of air and then his head felt like it had been hit with a bowling ball, and the enforcer went down.
Brenda was still laughing as she, Lulu and Emily flew over to General Hospital, ready to find their next targets. "Oh, you guys have no idea how good that felt. It was like…a million greeting cards with a million matching, perfectly-sized envelopes."
Lulu and Emily giggled, exchanging glances. "Dude, we should totally turn all conking duty over to her," the redhead whispered. "She's so much less uptight when she gets to clobber people."
"Okay, there's our girl," Brenda announced, leading them down toward the eighth floor nurse's station where Robin Scorpio was ruffling through some charts. "This is going to take a really delicate touch, because we have to strike a good balance with her."
"Yeah," Lulu agreed, reaching for her pixie dust. "We don't want to make her forget her love for Stone – we just want her to be able to love again."
"Do you think you can do it?"
"Lemme grab the manual, just to be sure," the blonde replied, reaching for the small booklet she always carried on Brenda's orders. "Okay, a pinch for teenagers…a smidgen for toddlers – isn't baby love adorable? – and…um…a spot for…oh, no, wait, that's just for the British. Er…a dash for the divorced…aha! A soupçon for the bereaved!"
"What the heck is a soupçon?" Emily wondered as Lulu dug for her measuring spoons.
"This much," the blonde announced, measuring out a trace amount. "Does that look right, Brenda?"
"Yes," the brunette replied, biting her lip as she eyed their target. "Now hurry it up – dump it on her!"
"And…phoo!" Lulu quickly blew the contents of her silver spoon onto the brunette, but Robin turned just in the nick of time to find another chart and the pixie dust instead landed on Maxie Scorpio-Jones, who was reporting to the nurse's station for duty.
Brenda groaned and covered her face with her hands as a glassy gleam spread across the young blonde's vacant hazel eyes. "Not again!"
"Maxie," Robin smiled. "There you are – I've been looking everywhere for you." Her small smile turned into a frown when the blonde wordlessly turned on her heel and walked away. "Hey, where are you going? Maxie!"
Lulu nibbled her lower lip, watching as Robin followed Maxie down the hall only to see that the young blonde had run into Lucky Spencer. "Whoops."
"No, no, hold on a sec," Brenda interrupted, her brows pinching inward as she thought. "Maybe this isn't as bad as it seems."
"How?" Emily asked, frowning at Maxie as she fawned over the young Spencer. "That dust was supposed to be for Robin and it was supposed to help her open up to Patrick enough to see that he's genuinely interested in her. We totally hit the wrong target!"
Brenda's dark orbs were glittering. "Did we?"
Lulu and Emily exchanged skeptical glances. "Didn't we?"
A lascivious grin made the brunette's lips curl. "Maybe – but we can spin our way out of it really easily."
"How?"
"We're supposed to get Elizabeth to realize that she doesn't love Lucky, right?" Emily and Lulu nodded, suspicious of the sparkle in Brenda's eyes. Brenda never sparkled – unless she was hitting people with wands or perusing new shoes from the fairy collection. "If Lucky is the recipient of unwanted female affection from another female, that can only help, right? It can help Elizabeth wake up and see that whatever they had was over. Eros always gets his way, you know – God loves him best."
"But won't he be mad that we screwed with Maxie's love profile?" Emily wondered, her lips pinching into a frown.
"Who cares?" Brenda just shrugged, her smile turning into a careless grin. "She's a teenage girl – they're totally dispensable! They fall in and out of love as often as they change their underwear. This is just one more crush under Maxie's belt. See? It all works out."
"If you say so," Lulu muttered, reaching for her satchel once more. "Should I try the dust again?"
"Yeah – this time, we'll have to make sure that she doesn't move around too much."
"She's heading to the locker room – follow her!" Emily led the way as the three pixies pursued Robin as she made her way through the corridors. Lulu was still measuring out her pixie dust, letting a few grains fall here and there as she tried to get the precise amount they needed.
"Good – she's alone." Brenda motioned to the others to follow and they all quickly lined themselves atop the row of lockers, watching as Robin began to take off her lab coat and street clothes and change into scrubs. "Hey, she's got Hello Kitty panties! I want a pair like that!"
"I didn't even know they made those," Emily muttered, waiting as Lulu finished her calculations. "You ready, Lu?"
"Yup…phoo!" With a gentle puff of air, the cloud of dust began to settle down on an oblivious Robin, who had just finished pulling on her pale blue scrubs. Her dark eyes caught on the picture of her and Stone that she kept in her locker – after all, it was only fitting since she had decided to go into medicine in order to save people like him – and she brushed it lightly with her fingertips.
She was still gazing at the photograph when the locker room door swung open and an energetic Patrick Drake sprang into view. Last night's date had gone extremely well and the good Doctor was in an even better mood. "Hey, there, Doctor Sourpuss."
He stopped when Robin turned, his eyes landing on the photograph she kept tucked into her locker, and sobered up. She offered him a half-smile as he opened the locker a few doors away from hers and began to change into a new pair of scrubs. "Patrick."
He eyed her, standing there in her blue scrubs, and tipped his chin at her. "What are you all gussied up for?"
The fairies watched as Robin shrugged, pulling her long dark tresses into a professional twist. "A new shipment of organs came in, and I'm supposed to stand by for a demonstration to the new interns."
Patrick snorted. "Those bumbling idiots? You're going to stand around and poke a chilled cow heart for a few hours while they scribble notes? Not the best use of your time, Dr. Scorpio."
She rolled her eyes, used to his barbs. "No? I bet you're about to tell me what would be a great use of my time, huh?" And no doubt, it would be yet another scenario involving the two of them naked in a supply closet; Patrick, though charming and moderately good-looking, was not very original.
He surprised her by slamming his locker shut and looking her directly in the eyes. "Actually, yes," he replied, tipping his chin up. "I'm scheduled to operate on a car crash victim – the nurses are prepping him right now. He suffered cranial injury as well as internal damage. You want to scrub in?"
Brenda bit her lip to contain an excited squeal as Robin considered the offer. "She's gonna say yes, she's gonna say yes!" Next to her, Emily was crossing her fingers as Lulu reached for another soupçon of love dust – just in case.
"You want me to assist with the surgery?" Robin's lips were pursed together in a thin red line as she weighed her two options against the other. "Who else is in?"
"Epiphany Johnson," Patrick replied easily, leaning against the lockers as he waited for the stubborn doctor's answer. "We're both off afterwards and we were going to grab some lunch down the street. You're welcome to join us for that, too."
The corner of Robin's mouth curved upward slightly, but in a flash she contained the smile and gave him a brisk nod. "Sure. Let's do it."
Patrick nodded and bowed away, motioning for her to lead the way. Robin glanced at Stone's smiling face in the worn photograph and quietly shut her locker, joining the younger Drake as the two walked out of the locker room, oblivious to the hooting fairies perched on top of the shelves.
"Finally, we did something right," Lulu cheered, pumping her fists in the air. "Oh, man, won't Eros be proud?"
"Don't get cocky yet," Brenda warned. "We still have to see to Elizabeth and that horndog Patrick. And, hey, I wonder if Jason made it back to town yet…"
The pixies all snickered at that. From the gigantic wallop that Brenda had bestowed upon the enforcer, it was a certainty that upon waking up, he'd change his mind and come running back to Port Charles to be with the woman he loved. It wasn't a very original move on their part, but at least the results would be favorable.
"Let's find that dumb girl before Jason gets back and make sure she's…ahem…ready to receive him," the brunette chuckled as a tittering Emily and Lulu followed close behind. "She's at the park right now, so this should be a piece of cake."
"I wish we knew what made her go back to that apeshit loser," Emily sighed as they followed Brenda to the park, where their target was sitting on a bench with her sketchpad. "It sure wasn't planned for her to do that, so…"
"There she is," the brunette interrupted, pointing at Elizabeth. "Gee, I wonder what she's drawing." Emily and Lulu laughed as she wiggled her brows suggestively. "If it's Jason, this is so going to be a piece of cake."
"Ha! We win!" Lulu crowed, hovering right above Elizabeth. "It is our favorite lunkhead enforcer!"
"Wonderful!" Brenda grinned, clapping her hands. "Okay, how do you two think we should handle this? Should we go for the wand, the dust or the arrows?"
"Arrows are only for the toughest cases," Emily recited, remembering the guidelines in the manual. "I think we need to go with a tap of the wand – not a clobbering, Bren – or a sprinkle of dust."
"The tap sounds…hey, what's this?" Lulu bent closer to Elizabeth, her eyes on the young woman's neck as she swept her hair up into a loose bun.
"A hickey?" Emily guessed, venturing closer for a better look. "No, wait, that looks like…"
Brenda's fingers gently graced the dark red thread cut into the brunette's porcelain skin, invisible to all but pixie eyes. "…An arrow burn."
Emily and Lulu turned to her, bewildered. "But Elizabeth wasn't supposed to be struck by an arrow."
The brunette clapped her hand to her forehead, muttering to herself. "Of course – Elizabeth's a smart kid, and there's no way she'd go back to that loser on her own. Someone must have accidentally hit her with an arrow and caused her to do that. Who's seen working in Port Charles recently?"
"Who hasn't been working in Port Charles recently?" Lulu asked, quirking a brow at her friend. "It's open season for these people all the freaking time."
"Can you do anything about it?" Emily wondered anxiously as Brenda studied the superficial cut. "Is there any way to…I don't know…erase it?"
The brunette chuckled to herself and gently traced her fingertips over the cut, backward and then forward, watching as it slowly disappeared like a loose smudge. "See, if you read your manual more carefully, you'd have known the answer to that."
Emily grinned sheepishly. "Well, now what? Do we still sprinkle her?"
Brenda cocked her head thoughtfully as the brunette as she worked on the shading of Jason's eyes. "You know, let's leave her alone for a bit…I think she's going to be just fine."
"Shhh…shut up, you're not letting her concentrate."
"You're not letting her concentrate!"
"You're both not letting me concentrate," Brenda snapped, preparing her bow and tipped arrow. The three of them were hovering outside the hospital, watching as Patrick and Robin went at it with renewed gusto. A brief interlude of mutual respect did little to stifle their natural antagonism toward each other – honestly, it was like foreplay between them.
"Selfish, egotistical, sophomoric-"
"At least I'm not afraid to live my life!"
"Living? Is that what you call this freak show of yours?"
"-Stuck in the past, afraid to move on-"
"My father was right! I should have been a secret agent!"
"Brenda – go!"
The brunette let loose and with a twang! her arrow sailed through the air and hit Patrick square on the bottom. Emily and Lulu gasped as the good doctor yelped, the momentum of the shot causing him to surge forward into Robin.
"Um…" After a long pause, the redhead tore her gaze from the couple and looked at her partners. "Was that supposed to happen?"
Brenda leaned on her bow, a pleased smile lighting up her face as she watched Patrick and Robin play tonsil-hockey. "Hey, I'm not going to complain. I'm just a damned good shot."
"Stand by, girls." Lulu glared at Brenda and Emily as they hurriedly hovered over to the tree branch where she currently sat. "Last stop. If this works out, we're so trading these ridiculous pink rags back for our normal uniforms."
"Oh, happy day, calloo, callay," Brenda muttered, glancing at her watch. "Okay, the lunkhead should be making his entrance in five, four, three, two…"
A pair of footsteps could be heard coming down the walkway, and all three fairies turned to see who it was. Lulu smirked when Elizabeth stepped into view, absently folding her sketchpad shut. "Yeah, wrong lunkhead."
Brenda giggled and tapped her watch. "He's coming, dammit. Just wait. Okay, five, four, three, two…"
Sure enough, another pair of footsteps, softer this time, could be heard ascending the steps to the gate. Elizabeth paused, looking up curiously, and all three pixies perched in the tree held their breath. When Jason appeared, Elizabeth's sharp gasp silenced the quiet cheers issued from atop the silver maple.
The enforcer, too, was stunned to see the brunette standing there. Their positions were reversed; this time, he was standing at the gate and she was watching him approach. The two simply stared at each other, drinking the other in after a week's long absence. They stared for such a long time that Brenda, Emily, and Lulu all began to reach for their respective arrows, wands and pixie dust.
"…Jason."
Fortunately for them, Elizabeth took matters into her own hands for a change. From their perch on the branch, the fairies watched as the woman covered the distance between her and the enforcer and flew into his arms, her lips meeting his just as he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up to an even height.
Emily and Lulu squealed, elbowing each other, and Brenda's pleased smile turned into a wicked grin when she saw that Lucky Spencer had spotted the lovers and was hastily making his way over to them. This time, she knew that Elizabeth would not be picking him over Jason, and everything was as it should have been all along.
"Come on, girls," she winked, hovering up out of the tree and waiting for her trainees. "Our work here is done."
The End.
