Samsonlove- I wasn't watching GH around that time, either, but it's basically been hammered into my head that the BJ heart storyline was like golden, much like Luke and Laura. You know the whole 'you will love Luke and Laura, they are your gods…' that sort of deal. Durant has found out the truth about his daughter, yes, but who is to say that it will come out so quickly? It hasn't yet, in my writing, although there are more and more hints to it coming out eventually. And yes, the Dillon and Jason conversation shall come soon enough.

Story-

Port Charles Hotel-

It felt so weird, going into the Port Charles Hotel without anything and knowing that she was going to check it. Lois wasn't sure just what it was about the moment that made her feel so odd, but there was something that made it seem strange regardless. Her mind raced with the possibilities. Was it because of the fact that she was going into a hotel without anything to bring with her? Maybe it was just the way that she felt after getting checked out of the hospital. Lois had been in the hospital a few times before, but there was something different about the visit that had just ended, something that made her very afraid. It was because of what happened, that had to be the reason. That, and the person who had caused it.

Lois couldn't help but look around the hotel. It was theirs, the Quartermaine's, they owned the hotel, just like they pretty much owned the hospital, and just like they owned almost everything else about Port Charles. The only way that she was going to get out of the painful loop that she had found herself in was if she did the same thing that she had done before: if she took her child and ran. But this time would it be harder? Yes, it would, because the last time she did it, Brook was too young to really understand. Now, now she would fight. If it wasn't for her father, then it would almost assuredly be because of the boy that she had fallen in love with. Sonny and Damian may have been able to underplay the feelings that Brook was feeling for the boy, but Lois… she knew. The way that Brook, who tended to carry herself with so much self-confidence, just sort of fell apart when she mentioned him, the way that she would blush when she would talk about how he was so nice to her… it reminded Lois quite a bit about the way that she used to think about Ned, when she still loved him.

Lois closed her eyes as she waited for someone to help her find her room. Did she hate Ned? Maybe… maybe not. Once upon a time Lois would have hated the fact that she could have had such a strong feeling of hate for her ex-husband, the father of her child, but now, she didn't know. Certainly Lois was angry with Ned, and she had every right to be. He had called on the flaws that she had as a mother, and, while Lois knew that they were there, hearing someone else say them just hurt her more than she thought it would. Her own illusions about her relationship with her daughter had been torn apart without any sort of sympathy for what it could do to her, and that was all Ned's fault. But… at the same time, it was not possible to just forget everything that had happened between the two of them. Ned and Lois had a lot of good years together. She would never forget that. She could never forget that. And, every time she saw her daughter she saw a little more of Ned in Brook, and each time Lois saw that part of Brook, she silently thanked Ned for giving it to her, because, despite all the negativity that was flowing through them and their relationship, Ned had a lot of wonderful qualities that he had bestowed upon Brook, least of all being her musical talent.

In the end, the only answer that Lois could give herself was that she wasn't sure if she hated Ned or not, and, in that uncertainty, Lois found herself even more irate because it was one thing to know one way or the other how a person felt about another person, but to not know at all… that just proved maddening. Opening her eyes, Lois saw that there was still not a single person who was there to help her. Sonny certainly would not have allowed her to be at a place where the help wasn't at least prompt, and she hated to see the gesture of good faith that he had given her go to such complete waste. More bitterness came into her being as she slammed her palm onto the bell that was on the desk. "I need service!"

"I told them to stay away for a little while…"

Lois looked over to the doorway to see Ned standing there, holding a bundle of flowers in his hand. "What gave you the right to do something like that?"

"My family owns the hotel, remember?" Ned wondered, knowing full well that Lois could not have forgotten. One of the initiation procedures into the Quartermaine family happened to be remembering each and every part of Port Charles that was owned by the family, from the big things down to each individual bench that was in the park. Lois had forgotten the tiny little details, but the big ones, they remained in her mind. His presence no longer being kept a secret, Ned walked further into the hotel.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Lois asked, not willing, or able, to give Ned the benefit of the doubt. Sonny had gotten the room for her so that she could get away from Ned. He knew that was what she wanted, and they were never married. If Ned understood Lois, even on some small level, then he should have realized that the last thing she would have wanted was to be spending time next to someone who had caused her such great pain.

"I didn't want the two of us to go out like that," Ned replied as honestly as he could. He was one of the few honest members of the Quartermaine family, at least on some level. Ned would tell lies like the best of them, when it was necessary, but, if it wasn't, he liked to keep everything as truthful as possible. Ned had seen the way that lies could destroy the people that they were told to, and he was not willing to allow himself to become one of the many causalities of that lifelong war. Standing mere inches from Lois, Ned rose his hand up to hand her the bundle of flowers. "Here, a peace offering. They're you're favorite… not very easy to find in the middle of January."

"You think this is going to make up for what you did to me yesterday, Ned?" Lois asked, grabbing the flowers and slamming them onto the counter so hard that the bell once more rang with the impact that it felt, and chunks of the flowers fell to the ground, torn apart by rage, unable to maintain their fragile beauty. "Because it doesn't. If you think you can just buy me off, then you really never understood me, did you? I may have been married to a Quartermaine for a little while, but that doesn't mean that I ever truly became one."

"Why are you so mad?" Ned asked, unable to keep the question from coming out.

"Why do you think I'm mad?" Lois growled. "You told me that I didn't understand my daughter nearly as well as I thought I did. You did the one thing that I could never tolerate, Ned, you challenged my abilities as a parent, you undermined my feelings about my daughter, our daughter."

"Like you never did the same…"

"When you wanted to spend time with Brook, did I ever once say that you couldn't? Did I ever once turn you away when you stopped in for one of your surprise visits? No, because I understood that, even though you had other priorities, Brook was always going to be important to you."

"But you never even let me bring my daughter back here to Port Charles. Aside from when she was a baby, this is the only time she's ever been around the place where she was born. The place where we thought she was going to grow up, the place that we thought we would be able to raise a family together."

"Those were just pipe dreams, Ned," Lois replied with a harsh whisper. "I realized that a long time ago, when I left you the first time, when I decided that I couldn't stay in Port Charles because of the way that your family would always come before me and my daughter…"

"You never gave me a chance to realize…"

"I gave you plenty of chances," Lois cut in before he could finish it. She was tired of letting him be the one who ended up sounding like he suffered the most, like he wasn't the one who went through the pain of all the lonely nights. She was the one who did that. She was the one who raised a daughter on her own because her daughter's father was too busy with everything else that was going on in his life to pay attention to someone that should have been more important. "You think that you needed to have your eyes opened up in order to understand that? I'm sorry, but I believe that when a man becomes a father they automatically sense that everything in their life has changed in some way, and that it shouldn't be something that they need 'time' to understand."

"And this is where it comes back to Sonny, doesn't it?" Ned asked, more than a little offended about what was happening. After all, he was trying to find some way to make peace between the two of them, and she wasn't even going to attempt it herself? How was that fair? "Sonny comes in on his white horse and rescues you when you need someone to hold your hand."

"Sonny was there for me when I needed someone to be there for me, I won't let you talk about him like he did something that was wrong. He cares about me a lot, he always has, and he always will. Besides, this doesn't even have anything to do with Sonny, I don't know why you brought him up."

"Because your thug best friend threatened me by saying that you had been though enough pain, that I had caused you enough torment for one life. You know Sonny, he never actually comes out and threatens to have a person killed, but people should get the general idea. I guess I should start wearing a bulletproof vest now, or have people with SWAT armor tailing me around."

"Sonny would never do something like that."

"Open your eyes, Lois, I know you enjoy blindly following Sonny's words like he's speaking gospel, but eventually you just need to cut the cord that connects the two of you."

"Says the man who is attached to his mother just as much as the day that he came out of her…"

"That's completely different."

"You're right, Sonny isn't evil. Tracy is."

"If I were you, I wouldn't use the words isn't and evil in the same line when describing Sonny."

"He never caused me to get into a car accident because things that he told me were so hurtful that I was a complete wreck. Sonny would never do something like that to a person, even someone that he wasn't particularly fond of, but you would, wouldn't you Ned?" Lois wanted to keep it from him, she didn't want him to know that it was his fault that she had gotten into that accident, but the way that he was attacking her best friend meant that something needed to be done, and the only way to shut Ned up was to often find something that was just so hard for him to accept that he was forced into being silent. A horrible tactic, for certain, but nonetheless worthy.

Ned looked at Lois, dumbstruck. It was true then? That feeling that he had? That he had done something that had placed his ex-wife in danger? Ned looked into Lois's eyes, they were filled with so much raw anger and other emotions, but he could also see one thing inside of them: truth. There was no denying it anymore… he truly had done something that had hurt Lois. "Had I known that it was going to have such a horrible impact on you, I never would have said those things."

"Well, you can't take them back now, and even if you didn't say them it doesn't mean that you wouldn't have thought them, or believed them. Face it, Ned, you never once trusted my abilities as a mother."

"That's not true."

"Save it, I don't want to speak with you anymore. Well, just one more thing, if you think that Sonny is going to kill you then you are a fool. He understands how important you are to Brook Lynn, lord only knows why she even cares about someone like you, but she does. Sonny knows that it would crush that girl if she had to deal with your death, so, just so you know, you're safe. And, if you're not certain, take my word for it. I didn't lie to you a second ago, what would make me lie now?"

"Lois…"

"Just call someone in here to help me, please," Lois replied, worn out from all the argument and the emotions that were brought up. Her head was starting to hurt again, although it was to be expected. Ned tended to have such an impact on her and her mental state. A nice, long overdue bath would be a nice way to counteract everything that she was going through. But, in order for that to happen, she needed Ned to lift the gates of service that he had closed.

Not arguing, because he knew that it would have been completely useless, Ned picked up the phone by the counter and dialed one of the numbers, "Yeah, this is Ned Ashton, we're done here, tell someone to help my ex-wife into her room, and make sure that her stay is comfortable." It was the least that he could do, after everything that he had put her through. They were all right, every single one of them. The way that they spoke to him, the way that they looked at him. It was going to be the way that he looked at himself in the mirror for a long time coming. "Goodbye, Lois."

Lois said nothing, only turning her back so that she did not watch him walk away. She had no desire to watch him leave, although she had every desire to feel him gone. With her eyes distracted, Lois did not see the final petal on one of the flowers fall to the ground, amid the rest of the wreckage.

General Hospital-

Although it was painful to go through the motions with everything that was on her mind, Bobbie had no choice. She still had a job that she needed to do, and she was going to do it. She had worked hard to earn everything that she had gotten in her life after she had given up being a prostitute, and she was going to be damned if she let anyone, especially John, take that away from her. He had taken away so much already, including a final part of her self-respect.

Bobbie walked through the halls, clipboard in hand, checking on the patients that she was assigned. She had seen Lois once before the woman left and was quite happy to see that everything was going to be all right. Many people liked Lois, and Bobbie was one of them. True, the relationship that Lois and Carly had was more than a little untamed, but that could be said for a lot of people and relationships with Carly. Nobody understood that aspect of her daughter better than Bobbie herself.

John had been searching the hospital for Bobbie, unable to keep the question inside of him any longer. When he found her he approached her, "Bobbie…"

"John, why are you here?"

"She's mine… isn't she?" John asked, his blue eyes tearing into her body, looking for an answer, one that he did not intend on leaving without.