General Hospital-

"Are you sure you should be up?" Sonny asked as he opened the door to see his best friend staring out the window by standing a little too close for comfort.

"I couldn't just stay in that bed forever, could I?" Lois asked, giving a small smile to Sonny. "I'd been in it for hours, I felt like I was going to go insane unless I got up and did something."

"You're not thinking about jumping, are you?"

"What kind of question is that?" Lois wondered. "I'm not suicidal, Sonny, and even if you were joking about it, I don't appreciate the implication."

"What did you want me to think, Lois?" Sonny asked, walking to her side, "You got into a car accident last night because of what happened. It's obvious that Ned crushed you with what he said at that place, and I can still see it in your eyes. You can't hide these things from me. I know you too well."

Lois felt the tears well up in her eyes once more. She hated it when she cried, but she couldn't help it, Ned truly had crushed her with his words. Not only because he said them, but, because, at least on some level, Lois believed that they could have been true. All those hurtful things that he said could have had some base of truth in them, and that knowledge did not sit well with her. "You always do this for me, you know that?" She said, laughing, trying to get her mind off of the pain. She hoped it would work, although she was willing to bet that it wouldn't.

"Do what for you?"

"Come to my rescue when I need someone to be there for me," Lois grabbed his hand softly. "You've done it for me since we were kids, always there to defend me when I needed help, always watching over me when I thought I was going to get myself in too deep. My entire childhood I knew I could depend on one person, and that person always was you, Sonny. I owe you so much for what you did for me back then, what you continue to do for me now."

Sonny was touched by her words, but they seemed empty to him. Not because of what Lois said, but because of what he felt about what she was saying, his own opinion of himself wasn't nearly as high as hers. "You're wrong."

The look of happy nostalgia was slapped off of her face a moment later, "Wrong? How am I wrong?"

"You don't owe me a thing, Lois," Sonny said calmly. "You know why I spent so much time at your house, with your family. You saw the way that he treated me and my mother. I needed to get out of that place as much as possible, because if I didn't he would have ended up killing my spirit more than he already did. Everything I did for you, all the times I watched over you like you were the most important person to me was because I felt like I needed to do something that would end up making up for all the burdens that I had placed on you and your family. My childhood was horrible, for the most part, but whenever I think about times when it wasn't so bad, when I was truly happy, you're always in those memories."

Lois reached over and hugged him. He took so much onto himself, so much responsibility, as if he didn't want anyone to share any of the burden that had followed him around like a dark cloud, and she loved him for it. Lois loved Sonny Corinthos, in her own special way. "You know," she said between laughs and happy tears, "when we were little, my ma would always say that she thought we would be together forever. I swear, she would be planning our wedding while we were playing stickball outside."

"She wouldn't have been a bad mother-in-law. She was, in a lot of ways, like a second mother to me as it was."

Lois pulled away, the laughter continuing, "You know, that one that you have now isn't so bad in the mother-in-law department either. Compared to who I got the first time I got married…" and there it was, Tracy's specter, her presence ruining the happiness that Lois had finally gotten after so many hours of painful introspection.

"She's all right, I guess." Compared to Tracy, Bobbie was a dream come true, but they still had a lot of issues between the two of them. No matter how good a father Sonny was to Bobbie's grandchildren, no matter how good a husband he was to her daughter, Sonny was still a dangerous person. Bobbie was one of the few people who rarely, if ever, saw passed that. And, in some ways, Sonny was thankful for it. "Your mom must have been really disappointed when I left the old neighborhood… seems like I crushed her dreams of a big catholic wedding in a church with hundreds of guests in a ceremony that would take hours." Sonny hated the long, drawn out ceremonies as practiced by his religion. He wanted to keep them short, and not just because the shorter the time spent getting married the longer they could spend alone.

"I don't think she was upset about that so much as she was upset about the fact that you left in the first place," Lois walked over to the bed, sitting on the edge. "She said how much she regretted not being able to try and convince you that what you were doing was only going to get you in trouble. She told me how much she wished that you would have stayed and finished high school. She even said that if you needed to move in with us so that you could get away from him, she'd let you, because she loved you that much."

"Your mother's a great woman…"

"So was yours, Sonny. So was yours."

"Yeah, she was." God help him, he missed her so much. Sonny never wanted anyone to feel the kind of pain that he felt when it came to his mother, and the way that he lost her. There were limits to even Sonny's power, however, and fighting off death was one of those limits. Already, one of his children had been forced to deal with such consequences of life, and it had to be the single defining moment in that child's life.

"So, why'd you stop by?" Lois asked, once more changing the subject. "Not that I'm trying to say I don't love you for visiting me, but was there a reason, or did you just decide that you wanted to see how I was doing?"

"Do I need an ulterior motive?"

"Do you need one? No. Do you have one? That's another question entirely, one that I can't answer."

Sonny snickered, "You do know me too well, don't you?" Unable to conceal his true motives for coming to the hospital, Sonny spoke once more, "I called to see if you had been checked out yet. Just so you know, when you're ready, I've got a driver prepared to take you over to the Port Charles Hotel. You can stay as long as you want, I'm paying for it. And, if you want to get a room for Brook, all you need to do is ask."

"Sonny… I can't accept that."

"Lois, I've protected you ever since we were kids. That's not exactly something that I can just drop at a moment's notice. I'm not taking no for an answer. Unless you can honestly tell me that you want to go back into the Quartermaine mansion and see all those people again. Tracy, Ned, Edward…"

"Alan and Monica aren't so bad."

"Depends on who you ask."

Lois frowned. She knew that there was a lot of bad blood between Alan, Monica and Sonny. Such things were expected when two people thought that the other one stole their grandson and converted him into a mobster-to-be. Luckily, they had managed to keep most of their animosity towards one another away from Michael, who probably wouldn't understand. The frown wasn't just because of Alan and Monica, though. It was because she knew, on some base level, that Sonny was right. She wouldn't want to go back to that place. She couldn't, not yet, maybe not ever. She had always held out hope that Ned had accepted her for who she was, and, apparently, that wasn't true. The worst part was that, through it all, she couldn't help but continue to feel for him. "All right," she said softly.

"Thank you. You'll love the room, Lois. I had them get the best room available, nothing less for my best friend."

"What about all my stuff?"

"If you need someone to go and get your things for you, I can arrange that. If you want to just leave it there and pick up some new stuff, I can arrange for that, too."

"You know, you're treating me like I'm your mistress or something, Sonny. How do you think Carly is going to react when she realizes what you're doing for me?"

Sonny grinned, "Carly's going to hate it, but what can she do? She knows how much you mean to me. Last night, I couldn't believe it, but she was there for me in ways that I thought she would never be able to be there for me, because of how much the two of you don't get along."

"You're not thinking that we're going to find some sort of common ground and be able to make peace, are you?"

"I'm not an idiot, Lois, I know that some things won't ever happen."

There was a light knock on the door as Brook poked her head inside. "Ma?" She was only expecting to see one person, but when she saw Sonny she was surprised, "Oh, hi, Sonny."

"Hello, Brook."

"Dad's outside, Ma," Brook said as she walked into the room from the doorway. "Do you want him to come in?"

"Not right now, Brookie," Lois replied. "I just want to see how you're doing first, okay?"

"All right…"

Sonny watched as mother and daughter embraced. Brook had been through so much, as had Lois, at least they had each other. In a lot of ways, Sonny wished that he had a daughter, just one. That didn't mean that he loved his sons any less, but, just to experience the same thing that other people had. To be able to treat someone like his little princess, that was something that Sonny wished he could have. "Lois, if you need me, you know how to get in touch with me. I'll see you soon, all right?"

Sonny quickly walked out of the room and looked for Ned. He was standing right around the corner, back to the wall, keeping his distance, waiting for the okay to come in. "Lois is spending some time with Brook right now, said she wanted to do it in private."

"What were you doing in there?"

"All that education that you got doesn't let you retain simple information, does it, Ned?" Sonny asked, completely devoid of sarcasm. As much as Lois and Carly hated one another, Ned and Sonny had that same kind of relationship. It was pretty difficult at times, but they managed to coexist, although not very peacefully. "Lois is my best friend, I'm always going to be there for her."

"Until you're put away in jail for everything that you do, or carried away in some body bag…"

"You can't even be grateful that the mother of your daughter is all right, that she's going to be around for awhile longer…"

"How much longer, Sonny? I can never tell, since the people around you tend to disappear so quickly that we barely register them on the radar before they're gone."

Sonny shook his head, "It must really burn you up to know that she wanted to spend time with me when she needed someone, and she can't even stand to think about you."

"Don't pretend to know how I think."

"I don't need to pretend to know how you think, Ned. I know how you think. Money, money, money. That's it, that's all you ever think about. That's why your marriage to Lois failed, that's why she took your daughter away from you, because you could never be expected to make the time of day for her when it mattered."

Ned looked down at Sonny, both in reality and in the metaphysical sense. Oh, how he wished to knock that smug little grin right off of his mouth, but he couldn't, because Sonny had more power than Ned would ever hope to have, and Ned had no desire to end up pushing up daises. "You've said your piece, why don't you leave now?"

"Because I'm not done yet, Ned, that's why. I've gotten Lois a room at the Port Charles Hotel, because she needs to be in an environment that doesn't poison her, like the Quartermaine Mansion. Now, I'm fully aware of the fact that you people own the hotel, but as long as she isn't surrounded by your influence I think she'll be fine. If Lois goes to the mansion to get her things, or, if she sends someone to get them for her, I don't want to hear about anyone telling her that she can't have them. Do you understand me?"

"Is that a threat?"

"Of course not," Sonny was not in the mood for threatening, he was just stating a fact. The things belonged to Lois, she wasn't a prisoner inside the walls of the Quartermaine mansion, although it could have been hard to tell. "I'm just letting you know that she won't be staying there anymore, and, if she wants to take your daughter with her, let her."

"Brook is going to stay with me. I'm not going to lose her again."

"You'll have her as long as she doesn't know that you were the one who caused her mother to get into that accident, that much is for sure. But, who can say how much longer you'll have her after that?" Sonny didn't know the answer, although he had a good feeling that it wouldn't be for much longer. "Lois doesn't want your daughter to hate you, and I'm respecting her wishes, but you're on thin ice. Don't fall in."