Title: Beautiful Flaws
Fandom: General Hospital
Characters: Tracy Quartermaine
Prompt: #31 Knife
Word Count: 4,165 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Luke has made many mistakes in his life, but none as serious as this one. Can he redeem himself in time to save Tracy from her own grief?
Author's Notes: AU. Sorry to throw another seriously angsty piece at you so soon, but this just came out. WARNING: Character death (not Luke or Tracy).

Just because he was drinking didn't mean he was drunk. Luke took another swig of the scotch, a hard ugly burn against his throat, and stared at the nothing in front of him. It was a fairly decent nothing, so it kept his attention long after the scotch stopped tasting good.

Who was he kidding? The scotch never tasted good. It was bitter and burned as it went down his throat, cheap stuff compared to the hooch he got from EddieQ's primo stash. The Dixie Chicks wailed in the background, and he wondered when Coleman had gone country.

Then he remembered he wasn't at Jake's. He wasn't in Port Charles at all, and he found as he tapped the glass on the bar for another round that he couldn't quite place the name of the town in which this fine establishment was located. And it didn't really bother him all that much, because one crappy bar in a forgettable burg was pretty much like all the rest.

The Chicks were singing an old Stevie Nicks song, sad and profoundly depressing to him in his current state. "Mirror in the sky, what is love," the cute little loud-mouth blonde sang. "Can the child within my heart rise above?"

"Damn musicians," he muttered to his drink, wishing it wasn't such a quiet night, wishing there would be a brawl, or a hold-up, or anything to take his mind off his thoughts. He wanted to be away from his head, into his body, but the alcohol seemed to be drawing him further inside with each sip.

"I've been afraid of changing cuz I built my life around you," the pretty blonde with the twang sang. "But time makes you bolder. Children get older, and I'm getting older, too."

"Shut up," he whispered to the music. He swore he could feel her eyes on him. Swore he could hear her breath in those chords, her sighs between the verses. "Damn women."

"You said it, buddy," the not-Coleman behind the bar said. He looked nothing like Coleman, but he might as well be. He had that same Coleman way of wiping down the bar, of standing, of breathing. Luke began to get angry at the thought of this fake Coleman, standing and breathing there, like he owned the place.

"Stay away from my wife," he blurted, then blinked. That had been over a year ago. And it had been his fault. His stupid idea to put Coleman in Tracy's bed. Who knew she'd like it? Who knew he'd like it? "Keep your hands off of her," he added for effect, despite the confused look of the not-Coleman.

"No problem," Not-Coleman muttered. "You doin' okay?"

"No thanks to you," Luke mumbled. He wasn't really tracking anymore, and that was just fine. He just wanted to look at his scotch, to watch it in the glass, watch the liquid slide down the inside of the glass as he drank deeply, watch it coat the surface with its sticky residue. "She doesn't love you," he added for good measure.

"Dude, I don't even know your wife."

"Well, you should. She's a remarkable woman." Luke took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "She's amazing, that wife of mine."

The bartender nodded slowly, as if taking care of the lunatics at the bar were a normal part of his job description. "Then you're a very lucky man," he said as he took the bottle out of Luke's reach and tucked it safely under the bar.

"I'm a moron," Luke spat into his drink. "And she was…"

"Remarkable?"

"Yeah…" Luke was playing his finger along the rim of the glass. The bar was dark, and mostly empty except for a couple of businessmen with loosened ties nursing drinks and staring at their laptops. "People move right through you, ya know? They're like air—you breath them in, and just push them out again."

"Uh-huh…" Not-Coleman looked around, his eyes darting from the neon Corona clock on the wall to the door. "We're gonna have last call in about a half hour. You want me to call you a cab?"

"It was an honest mistake, you know. Just a minor error in judgment." He pushed the glass away, leaning back so the barstool balanced precariously on its back two legs, his arms stretched stiff before him, palms flat on the bar. "It wasn't supposed to go down like this." He pulled forward, letting the stool wobble under him until it settled flat on its legs again. "Marry her, get the fifteen million, quickie divorce. Easy as pie."

"Uh, yeah. You want some pretzels? You've been hitting the scotch pretty hard…"

"She was magnificent. Everything I did, she had an answer to. Every nasty little scheme, every sneaky little plot—my Spankybuns could match me tit for tat. Amazing." Luke grinned, eyes seeing straight through the bartender to the little sitcom flashback he called his marriage. It was in vivid color before him, the truth of how badly he'd fucked up. "I am the lowest dog who ever lived," he added for good measure.

"I really wouldn't know."

"Did you ever just forget you were awake, forget that the words you were saying were real? Did you ever just open your mouth and hear the end of your life on the tip of your tongue, just hanging out there waiting to destroy the only good thing you've managed to hold on to?" He didn't wait for an answer. Of course Not-Coleman knew what he was talking about. Bartenders knew about pain, about the drama of human foolishness… "I got away with murder, you know. She let me get away with just about anything." He downed the last of his scotch. "Anything but that."

The bartender leaned forward on the bar. It was obvious this guy wasn't going to stop talking, and well, it was more interesting than cleaning out the tap. "You wanna cup of coffee? I'm not gonna let you drive like this."

"He was everything to her. The only unconditional love she ever got in her whole, hard life." Luke grinned, shaking his head. "Course, she screwed that up on her own, the minute he fell in love. Poor Spankybuns could never stand competition, even from her own daughters-in-law. But they still had something special, Spanky and that kid. Despite everything she did in the name of motherly love—posting pictures of his girlfriend on the Internet, trying to bust up their marriage by cutting him off financially, running her over with her car—" Luke frowned. "No, wait. That was the other one. Jenny." He shook his head again, trying hard to clear the cobwebs. "Can't keep it straight, ya know? She's had a long career of destroying her sons' relationships."

"Well, I can see where that would drive you to drink…"

Luke laughed. "No, no, no. That's just part of my precious pink popsicle's charm. A little quirk of personality that makes her all the more delicious." He stopped, coughing slightly, choking slightly, hurting so hard suddenly that he couldn't breathe. "Damn it," he muttered, looking for his scotch, looking for somewhere to be that wasn't him. "Damn it to hell," he added for good measure.

Not-Coleman drew in a long breath. One of the businessmen on the other side of the bar was packing up his laptop, tossing bills down on the bar to clear his check. The other looked like he was wrapping things up, too. "Is there anyone I can call?"

"There's nobody to call, Coleman. Wait, Not-Coleman. There's nobody left who would take my call in that house."

"What happened?"

"I said the wrong thing to the wrong impressionable kid at the very, very wrong moment." He lifted the glass to his mouth. It was empty, but that didn't stop him from tipping it upwards, optimistic about the chances of some dregs remaining to help him over the line into complete alcoholic oblivion. "He listened to me, that Young Spielberg. He took my advise—hell, it wasn't advise. I was goading. I was drunk and angry, and I took it out on a kid. Told him he was spoiled, worthless. Told him he never was going to do anything with his life because he was so used to living off the fat of his rich, powerful family, and that if he had any sense at all, he'd pack a duffle bag, walk away from all that money and comfort, and do something useful with his life."

"Bet Spanky wasn't happy with that." Not-Coleman didn't know why he was encouraging this guy. He had things to do. It was almost midnight, and he didn't want to be here all night cleaning up because some loser with family problems sucked him in to his drama.

"He thought he could do it on his own, without his family's money and influence." Luke put the glass down a little too hard, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand. "Hell, the kid spent six months in a penthouse in SoHo when he was eight, and thought that made him streetwise." His head was beginning to hurt. His eyes wanted to close, they were dry, but every time he shut them, he saw her face, saw the pain, saw the utter anguish in those lovely blue eyes.

Luke hadn't pulled the knife. Luke hadn't staged the mugging. But in Luke's mind and heart, he knew he had murdered Dillon as surely as those punks in SoHo. He looked up at Not-Coleman, begging with his eyes for more booze, for anything that would make him stop seeing what he saw when he closed them. "One more for the road?"

"Sorry, dude. Just coffee after 11:30. House rules."

"Bastards barely left enough of him for his mother to identify," he muttered softly as Not-Coleman went to get a cup of coffee.

The bartender brought the coffee, putting it down in front of Luke, a serious expression on his face. "Man…" he murmured. "That's harsh."

"Yeah."

"And she blames you?"

Luke tilted his head, taking the coffee even though he didn't want it. "Worse. She blames herself. I wish she'd blame me. I wish she'd crucify me, knock me to my knees like she's done to so many people in the past." He took a sip. It was black, no sugar, and pretty nasty, but he drank it anyway. "But she didn't. She was hysterical in the morgue, then nothing. She didn't cry at the funeral. Didn't seek revenge, other than cooperating with the police."

"Did they find the guy who did it?" Not-Coleman asked.

"Nah. Maybe they never will. Who knows?" Luke took another sip, wincing against the heat and the taste. "I have very little faith in the NYPD, sir," he added.

"So…" Not-Coleman watched the guy finishing the coffee, grabbed the pot and poured him another cup without asking. The other businessman had left by now, and frankly, he was ready to close down and make this day go away. But he couldn't just send him out into the streets the way he was. He could walk in front of a bus, or into another bottle. "You're just…taking a break from Spanky now?"

"I can't…I just…" He sighed. "I'm not good with the 'being there for the ones I love' thing."

"But I thought the marriage was just about the fifteen million."

"So did I, Not-Coleman. And there's the rub, you know?" Luke downed the coffee in two gulps. "I was not supposed to fall for that dame. No, no, no, no, no. Mrs. Spencer's blue-eyed boy does not get mixed up with that type. This was all business, no pleasure."

"But she's magnificent," Not-Coleman reminded, wiping the ring from the bar where Luke's scotch glass has left a watery circle on the surface. "That's what you said."

"And that's what she is," Luke agreed. "And how can I be with her, knowing that her son never would have been in that alley, never would have met up with those guys, never would have wound up with a knife skewered in his gut, if I hadn't said what I said?"

"Does she know? I mean, about what you told the kid?"

"Oh, yeah. She knew. And before Dillon got killed, she was all about the punishment." He had an almost merry look in his eyes at the memory of Tracy's rage, but it faded like everything else. "Then…nothing. Blank eyes, empty expressions. She's dead, buddy. She's just dead inside now, and I did it to her."

"No, the guy with the knife did it to her. You ever figured maybe you might be able to make it better? To help her with it?"

"Where'd you get your psychology degree, Einstein?" Luke said angrily. "Nothing's gonna make it better. Nothing I say or do will ever make it better."

"Well, you sure aren't making it better sitting in a bar getting shit-faced while your wife deals with this all by herself."

"She's got a crapload of relatives…."

"Not her husband…"

"'Course, they're blaming her. Blaming me. Blaming everybody."

"Except the guy who did it."

"I left her alone with those vultures."

"Not cool, man," Not-Coleman said, taking the cup from Luke's shaking hands. "You want another?"

Luke seemed distant for a moment, as if he were hearing the bartender through a great depth of water. Then he shook out of it. "Uh, no, buddy. No. I think…I think I need to go home."

Not-Coleman suppressed a smile. "You want a cab?"

Luke shook his head. "I have never been more sober in my life," he said, and meant it. He'd left her. It had only been a day, but it was enough. Enough to show her he didn't care, enough to show her he didn't care what happened to her, how badly her family treated her. "Thanks for the coffee. How much do I owe you?" He tossed a twenty and a ten on the counter, ignoring the guy's comments that that was way more than the bill, and headed out of the door.

He took the back roads, drove slowly and cautiously. He knew he had enough alcohol in his system to warrant a DUI, and the worst thing he could do at this point was have to be bailed out of jail. Or rushed to the emergency room. So he took his time, and got to the Qmansion at just after three in the morning.

It was good that he was so late, good that he could avoid unpleasant conversations, accusing questions. He didn't want to get into another fight with EddieQ. It wasn't that time anymore, and what he wanted was to see his wife.

He didn't knock when he went to her room. It was dark, and his eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light. When they did, he realized she was not in her bed. He scanned the room for motion, and found her sitting in a chair near the window. The moonlight cut a swath of silver-grey light across her features, and for a moment, Tracy looked ancient, hollow, ghostly. Then he blinked, and there she was, his wife, his nemesis.

He wanted her more in that moment than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. It wasn't sex or passion or even love. It was something deeper, more primal. Something connected between them that was so subtle and deep he'd never noticed it until it was gone.

Until he'd destroyed it.

And now here he was, coming back, coming home, the guy who never came home until he was good and damned ready.

He thought of Laura. It was brief and it was against his will, but it came nonetheless. He thought of how many times he'd watched his ex-wife sitting, just like this, her expression vague, as far away as if she were on Pluto, rather than across the room.

Tracy was so much nothing like Laura that it would be comic, were it not so sad. Tracy was his soul mate, not Laura. Tracy was his match, his equal and his ideal. And as much as he loved Laura, as much as he'd always love Laura, he knew in his heart that she was no more right for him than he was for her. They had always been that way—loving in spite of nature, not with it. Bending and stretching to accommodate the differences, never quite fitting perfectly even in the best of times.

Tracy fit like a glove, custom fit to match his every imperfection with beautiful flaws of her own. No matter how they tried to mix it up, they always fell back into place. Even when they didn't want to. Especially when they didn't want to.

He wondered when he'd started loving her, realized he couldn't find a date or moment or event that could match the starting of passion, of need, of desire. He had always loved Tracy Quartermaine, even before he ever met her.

"Hi," he whispered.

She didn't turn. She just kept staring out that window into the moon-swept night. "You're home," she said blandly.

Her voice was cracked, as if gone far too long without having a drink. Luke's mind clicked on that thought—after her initial fit of inebriation the day she found out of Dillon, Tracy hadn't done much drinking at all. He wondered if she'd eaten tonight. She'd skipped dinner the night before, and suddenly Luke was feeling very Papa Bear about his Mama Bear. "I'm home," he replied.

"It's kind of soon, isn't it?" Still she didn't turn, didn't face him, didn't to anyway to physically acknowledge his presence aside from her brief sentences. "Usually you're gone a couple of weeks."

He shrugged, crossing the short distance to her side. "The open road didn't hold the same allure this time as it has in the past," he admitted, squatting down next to her chair until they were eye to eye. He balanced himself by putting one hand on the arm of the chair, and used the fingers of his other hand to stroke the hair from her face. "You're up late," he said.

She merely shrugged. If his touch affected her, she didn't show it in the set of her jaw.

"Couldn't sleep?" he prompted, but she responded with a stiff shake of her head and nothing else. "Well, maybe you should try again, sweetheart."

"Ned brought Brooke Lyn by today," she said in that same monotone. It was random enough, but it was something. "She got a call-back for Julliard."

"Well, isn't that something?" He eased down onto his knees, age and gravity wreaking havoc on his squatting abilities. "Ned must be very proud of his girl."

"She doesn't know if she wants to go there. Not sure that's the path she wants to take with her career."

"It's a tough decision," Luke agreed.

"They're all tough decisions," she said softly. Luke noticed her fingers, gripping the arm of the chair tightly, white-knuckled and stiff against the padded surface of the Biedermeier. "Where to go to school, who to love, what to have for dinner." For the first time, she turned to him, fixed those cool, empty eyes directly on him. "It's all a tough decision, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he nodded. His hand was flat against her cheek now, fingers laced through her coffee-colored hair. He wanted to kiss her, to pull her to him and hold her there forever. He wanted to fix this. But there was no fixing something like this, and he knew it. "Still, I'm sure it was a lovely visit."

"It was awkward," she said. "Nobody knew what to say. I never had the relationship with Ned I had with Dillon." She paused, catching her words, catching her breath as it stopped in her throat and begged for release. "I could talk to him about anything, you know? Not in public, but when we were alone. When we weren't fighting." She raised her hand, catching the fingers of his hand where they were in her hair. "Why were we fighting again?"

"Who knows," Luke said softly, squeezing her hand gently. "He knows you loved him."

"I know."

"He loved you, too, Tracy."

"Alan went back to work today," she said, changing the subject with such abrupt speed that Luke blinked. "He took as much time off as he could, but they needed him."

"It was good of him to be so supportive of you, sweetheart." He was watching her face now, trying to catch a glance of the woman who fired his passions, who matched him on his own playing field. But she seemed lost, trapped in that shell of mourning.

It was mourning. Luke knew a thing or two about grief, how it worked and what it did to a person. He knew, or at least he'd been told, that even pain this deep would eventually subside, and the mourner would find their way back to the human race.

But now, in this dark room, staring at her haunted eyes, he wondered if anybody knew anything at all about what it was to lose someone. Each grief had its own flavor, its own properties, unique and distinctive. Time heals all wounds, they said, but how can there be one magic bullet to cure something so profound, so individual and personal, as grief?

"You should get some sleep," he whispered again, rising to stand beside her. "Let me tuck you in."

"No, I'm all right. You go to bed."

"Spanky…" He hovered, not knowing what to say, how to deal with this. He was good at starting things, and pretty good at wrapping them up. But dealing with the aftermath—well that was not his specialty. "I'm sorry."

"For leaving, or for coming back?"

"For everything. For my part in what happened to him…" He knew that it was lame. Such apologies were weak and pathetic, and rarely accomplished what they set out to do. "I never meant to…"

"Maybe I should go to bed," she said abruptly, standing so quickly that he almost lost his balance. "Thanks for stopping by to let me know you were back."

He caught her wrist, stopping her, pulling up behind her to rest his chin against her cheek. "Let me stay," he whispered. "It's too cold outside to sleep alone." Before she could protest, he continued. "I promise I won't try anything funny."

"I can't…"

"I know. Neither can I. It's just…" He turned her to face him, tucked two fingers under her chin, lifting her gaze until they were looking into each other's eyes. "I loved him, too, Spanky. I miss the hell out of him."

She just nodded, her lips pressed tightly together.

He kissed the top of her head, holding her for a moment before taking her hand and guiding her to the bed. "What side do you sleep on?"

"The right," she said, and together they moved to the right of the bed.

He helped her with her robe, noticing for the first time that she wore only a man's pajama top. It was lightly colored and covered with old-fashioned film reels. He didn't ask. Everybody got through how they got through, and Tracy was no different.

She caught his glance. "Alice didn't get around to the laundry today," she lied.

Luke chose to believe her and said nothing as he tucked her into the bed. On his way around the foot, he kicked off his shoes, then his pants and shirt. By the time he was on his side of the bed, force of habit had him tugging at his shorts, but then he thought better of it. She was pretty fragile right now, and his nudity, no matter how platonic, might make her uncomfortable. So he pulled up the covers and sheet and slid in next to her.

She was all the way on the other side of the king sized bed, her body held tightly in a fetal position, facing away from him. He inched over until he was behind her, molding himself to her form, cradling her in his. It wasn't a come on. It was protection. It was two souls crouching together in the storm, waiting for the winds to die, waiting for a time when it was safe to lift their heads again and survey the damage.

"I love you, Spanky," he whispered into her hair. He'd said it before, even meant it on occasion. But tonight, this morning, it was the truth. It was a truth so simple and undeniable that it rocked them both to the cores. "I love you."

She breathed in deeply, her shoulders rising slightly with the effort. Her hand moved slowly until it rested on his arm, the one that was holding her, the one that was protecting her against all the monsters inside and out.

"I love you, too, Luke."

The End

Written for the LJ 100 Situations ficathon.

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