Samsonlove- Maxie has her faults, but that's what makes her human, and what makes her appealing to some people, like me. I love Robyn's Maxie more, but that's just because I can't be trusted. Anyway, as for Ric, I loved evil Ric, because he was twisted, but I love good Ric, because good Ric is good. I just like Ric, a lot. I like anything that the writers give me as far as Ric and Sonny go, for the most part. I think that even if the writers don't write a very good storyline, Rick and Maurice act it out so well. John is a sick man, and you will see who he calls soon enough. It might surprise you. It should.

Story-

General Hospital-

He arrived with a few minutes to spare before he had to get working. As he walked into the doctor's locker room he saw them, his fellow interns. Some of them, anyway. A few who were going to be on the shift with him, a few who were just coming off the shift that they were on, they were all in there. And, they were talking. At least they were talking when he walked in. The minute that he got into the room, however, any of the chatter ceased for a moment as they all looked at him. It wasn't the first time that it had happened to him, nor would it likely be the last. No, the people that he worked with didn't exactly believe him to be of the same level that they were. After all, they had completed all their classes before they got the chance to be interns, but Damian got to be an intern well before he was finished with his classes. He was only twenty-one, they were all in their mid-twenties, the youngest member of the squad still being two years older than him. It was easy to see that they were envious of what he had accomplished, of the things that he had been granted in life, but the way that they looked at him made him feel like he didn't matter to them. And, at least at that moment in time, feeling unwanted was not something he wanted to deal with again. It brought up old wounds. Wounds that had yet to be healed.

Trying his best to casually ignore them as well as find a way to make it through the pain that he was feeling, Damian moved past the crowd towards an empty locker. It wasn't like high school where one was assigned to a specific person. People shared the lockers, taking the ones that were available. Sometimes they would want the same one over and over, but for the most part they made with what they had. Damian was no different, finding the first open locker and taking out the outfit that was neatly folded in his bag. By that time they had started to talk about things again, but, if their conversation changed, he would never know. Some of them were at least casually friendly with him, but on the whole he was usually alone, finding solace only in the people that came to visit him, his mentors and Bobbie. Maybe that was why they were so angry, because of the ties that he had with some of the more higher ranked officials in the hospital. Alan and Monica may have hated Sonny, but they certainly held no ire for him. Bobbie loved him dearly. Even, on some level, Tony appreciated him because of his connection to Maxie. Would Tony suddenly throw away his support because of what had happened? The thought had not crossed his mind until that moment, and when it did he was unsure of the answer. Tony loved Maxie dearly, partly because of the blood bond, but more so because of the fact that his own daughter's heart pulsed through Maxie's body.

Scrubbed up, wearing the pale blue outfit that most of the doctors wore when they were on duty as well as the smock, Damian walked out of the locker room a few minutes before the rest, never once taking a look over his shoulder to see if they continued to look at him. He had a feeling that they did.

She waited at the nurses station, knowing full well that eventually he would find his way there, they all did. It was impossible for a doctor at General Hospital not to at least pay a passing visit towards the nurses' station at least a dozen times a day. It didn't matter how long she had to wait, she would wait for hours on end if that was what she needed to do, just so that she would have the chance to talk with him, to explain what had happened, to explain how sorry she was that she screwed everything up. Maxie needed him to listen, she needed him to realize that she didn't intend to do anything bad, anything that would have hurt him. It just ended up being so much worse than it should have been. She couldn't help it. It wasn't her fault.

As she leaned against the nurses' station counter, leering in all directions, she finally saw him coming up around the corner. His face showed so much pain, like he was holding back everything that he wanted to let out, but was afraid to. She knew it would look something like that, but she had no idea that it would look exactly like that, that the look would hurt her nearly as much as it did. In that moment, she froze. Did she really want to go and talk to him? Did she really want to try and explain herself? Was it really necessary that she even made the attempt? Why should she have been the one to do it? Why couldn't someone else do it? Why did it fall on her shoulders? After all, Maxie wasn't the only one to make a mistake, right? He had done something that he shouldn't have done, he had made it look like he was doing something with Brook after he had assured her that he wasn't. It wasn't her fault that it looked so convincing.

But, in the end, Maxie understood that nothing she could tell herself was going to work. She couldn't just trade the guilt that was going through her mind for something else, because it was impossible to supplant. Sucking up her courage, and her pride, she walked over to him, intercepting him before he could walk away from her. "We need to talk…"

He knew that she was there. Saw her out of the corner of his eye, felt her as she lingered in the waiting, looking for him. He should have turned around and walked the other way, but he didn't. He didn't know why he didn't retreat, but it was too late to think about the reasons now. What he needed to do was find a way to get away from her, because he didn't want to talk. Not now, maybe not ever. "I'm on duty…"

"You don't start for another five minutes… I memorized your schedule, remember?"

"Schedules can change. Maybe I ended up switching shifts with someone because I knew that you would remember what time I started." A lie, not a bad one, but still a lie. Would she buy it?

Maxie shook her head, "I even asked the nurses to make sure one way or the other that I wouldn't be keeping you from something important. Besides, if you were on duty you'd probably have a chart or something in your hands, and you don't have anything. No, you're just trying to make up excuses because you don't want to talk with me."

"Shouldn't you be with your bedmate?"

Maxie lowered her eyes, "That was harsh."

"So was walking in on you having sex with another guy, but you seemed to not care about my feelings at that point in time. You know what they say about payback, Maxie. It's a bitch."

"Don't talk to me like that… please. I don't want you to be angry with me."

"That's kind of hard, don't you think?" Damian asked. "I mean, I don't even know what I did to you that pissed you off so much, but whatever it was you made sure that what you did would absolutely destroy me. So, tell me why I shouldn't be angry with you?"

"Because…" and she realized that she didn't have an answer. Not a good one. Not even a bad one. She also realized that he knew that she didn't have an answer, and that he was using that fact to his advantage.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" He had memorized her class schedule as well. She had a class that she needed to be at. Just because it was early in the semester didn't mean that she could just throw away her studies. If anything else it was probably more imperative that she be at the school and feeling out her teachers instead of trying to make him feel even more uncomfortable than he already was feeling.

"I needed to talk with you… it was more important."

"I don't want you skipping out on your education because of me. Your father already hates me, Maxie. If you told him that we broke up he probably blames me and hates me even more, if he finds out that you're skipping out of school to spend time with me, to try and patch things up, then Mac will find some random little violation that I've done sometime in my life, a parking ticket or something, and find a way to put me away for it…"

"Mac's not like that."

"Mac is exactly like that."

He may have had a point. She could envision her father doing exactly what he said Mac would do. Sighing, Maxie realized that it was going to be more difficult than she thought to get some time with him. "Can we please talk?"

"I have nothing to say to you, Maxie. I just want you to leave me alone. If the same thing had happened between the two of us but with me being the one who wronged you, I would give you the space that you needed. Please respect that… working here is going to be difficult for me because I'm still so hurt by what you did, don't make it worse on me. If you distract me too much then you're just going to put other people at danger. I could lose my internship, I could lose my career as a doctor… you've already destroyed one dream of mine, don't take the chance of destroying another, please." Without even giving her enough time to formulate a response, Damian left her to go and find something to do. Anything. Even if it involved cleaning a bedpan he would do it.

Maxie watched him go, not out of respect, but mostly because she was stunned by the way that he spoke to her. That kindness and gentility that she thought made him so perfect was gone, and she knew that it was gone because of what she did. She had stripped something that was so pure and good away from him, and she did it because she was such an idiot, because she didn't have the good sense to realize more about the truth than to just formulate some sort of ideas in her head about what was happening. That was horrible of her, and she didn't really understand the scope of her error until that particular moment.

With nothing else to do, with nothing else to say and with the knowledge that he would end up pushing her away even if she tried to do something else, Maxie walked away and into the elevator, shutting the door so that nobody else would see her inside. When she was alone she leaned against the wall and started to cry. Everything that was good in her life always ended up being destroyed, and it was almost always her fault.

On the other end of the hospital, he stopped walking for a moment, staring at himself in the window of the maternity ward. He could see it in his reflect, a dim but still shining light that came from his eye. A tear. He wiped it away as quickly as possible before walking down the hall.

Kelly's-

"You're in here alone today?" Mike asked as he saw Carly walk into the dinner. It was unusual to not see her with Courtney, with Sonny, with Jason or with her children. Rare was it when Carly decided to go solo. Usually, it was because something was troubling her. Mike understood his daughter in law well enough to know that much, which was both touching and a little bit disturbing because people would often say that those who understood Carly that much were in too deep and needed to pull out as quickly as possible.

"Everyone's abandoned me," Carly said coyly, "I'm like a leper."

"Sometimes you might be…"

"Mike!" Carly exclaimed. "What a horrible thing to say!"

"You put the idea in my head, Carly. Nobody but you. But, no matter what happens, people will always welcome you back into their lives completely, because whatever you do, whatever mistakes you make, you always find a way to show people that you're worth having around. You care about them so much that they can't help but want you in their lives."

Carly smiled, but inwardly she was thinking about some of the things that she had done to people that they wouldn't forgive her for, ever. Mike was probably one of them, but Sonny was the big one. Her own husband. If he found out about what she had done… what had happened because of her desperation, he would never forgive her. Not that she expected him to. In fact, if Sonny ever did find out the truth about the accident it would only be from karma, and she would accept that. It would tear apart her soul, but so was holding the secret from him. Thankfully, someone else knew, and in being able to talk about it with someone, even if that someone wasn't exactly her favorite person, she felt some of the guilt be taken from her shoulders, and any amount of guilt that was taken off of her was certainly worth the effort.

"Carly? You okay?"

Carly blinked two times in a quick motion. "Yeah, Mike, I'm fine. I was thinking about something. You know me, always thinking."

"It's one of your best and worst qualities. Penny for your thoughts?"

"Actually, I came in here to see if I could find anything about my mother and the way that she's been acting."

"You're still on that hunt?"

"I can't help it," she replied. "I know that my mother and I have had a history of bad blood, but that is behind us now, at least on a lot of levels. I want to help her, and she won't let me. I don't know why she won't…"

"Sometimes it's easier for someone to deal with their problems on their own than to have anyone help them. You should give Bobbie the benefit of the doubt, because if she felt that she was in too deep I know that she would go to someone for help, and you would probably be on the top of that list."

"I wish I could really believe you when you say that… but sometimes it's a lot harder to think about myself as a confidant to my mother instead of thinking of myself as that person who tried to break her entire life apart when I was younger."

"You've grown up, so has she."

"The first point is debatable."

"Well, why don't you debate it with yourself over a cup of coffee? Have a seat, and I'll go and grab the container."

Carly nodded with a smile on her face. Mike always had a way about him that made her feel better when she was down. She saw a part of him that Sonny had either forgotten about or never seen. And, even if he did, he would probably find some way to forget about it, or discredit the feelings that he had inside of his soul. Carly sat down at a table and looked out the window to see Durant staring at her. She rolled her eyes and looked the other way, turning around a second later to see that he was gone. "Creepy bastard," she muttered as she waited for her coffee.