A/N: Thank you all so much for coming back to this story! There's maybe a little timeline adjustment here at the end from what was on the show, but it's one of those areas they weren't ever super clear on, so I'm taking the opportunity to fill in a little bit more of Natalie's backstory in those missing years. Enjoy!

"Alright buddy, let's get you to bed," John whispered to Liam, carefully easing himself off his couch in his small hotel room. Although it had been his home, such as it was, for years, as he stepped over a toy truck to reach the crib he'd set up in the corner of the bedroom, he knew it was rapidly becoming time to move on. After all, this was no place to raise a child, and in the week that he'd been back with Liam, he found himself realizing more and more that he needed someplace a bit more appropriate for a child.

"Your mom's supposed to help with that," John said, gently laying Liam down in the crib. "We talked about buying a house when she pregnant. When she's better, maybe she'll want to do that again."

John paused, straightening instinctively at an unexpected knock on the door. Taking a minute to make sure Liam was settled, John walked to the door, not entirely surprised to open it and find Jessica standing in the hallway.

"What are you doing here?" John asked. "Did something happen with Natalie? Does she remember something?"

Jessica shook her head. "No, she's still the same," she said. "There's something I need to talk to you about, though."

John frowned, stepping back from the doorway as a signal for Jessica to step into the apartment. Glancing around, Jessica almost laughed at the contrast of the minimalist rooms now seemingly overflowing with toys and other baby paraphernalia.

"I see fatherhood is going well," she said, raising an eyebrow as she looked around.

"Storage wasn't high on the list when I rented this place," John said, moving a few things off the couch so Jessica could sit down.

"Babies do have a way of taking over," she said. "How's he doing?"

"Mostly okay," John said, pausing by the crib to make sure Liam was still sleeping. "He still wakes up crying and asking for mama, but he seems more comfortable with me now."

"Good," Jessica said. "Kids are resilient, and he's not even a year, he probably won't even remember this."

"I hope so," John said. "So, what did you need to talk about?"

"Right," Jessica nodded. "Straight to the point. We need to talk about Natalie."

"What about her?"

"Well, this is all feeling a little too familiar," Jessica said. "I mean, it was only, what? A little over two and a half years ago that I was in her shoes, and I had no memory of my adult life."

"I remember."

"Yeah, well, we all know how that turned out," Jessica said. "I've been thinking about it a lot. We're here because of that, John. It all traces back to that."

John nodded silently, not saying anything to correct her conclusion.

"I forgot who I was," Jessica continued. "I forgot my sister, my daughter, my boyfriend, my whole life, and it destroyed my life."

"That's a little extreme," John said.

"If I hadn't lost my memory, Brody and I would be married," Jessica said. "There wouldn't have been any paternity issues, for Ryder or for Liam. Natalie wouldn't have lied to you, so you might have been married too. And we wouldn't have been fighting, certainly not to the point that she wound up in a coma in London. Am I wrong about that?"

"I guess not."

"Right, so, my point is, losing my memories destroyed so much in my life," Jessica said. "I'm just now rebuilding that, and it's hard. I think it's harder because there's so much I want to say to Natalie, so much I need her to hear or that I need to hear from her, and we can't do that right now. But then there's a part of me that doesn't hate her, and that part of me is terrified for her."

"Why? Because she might not get her memory back?"

Jessica shook her head. "No," she said. "Because she might, but what if it's too late? If I'd gotten my memory back even a week earlier, things might have been okay. But Brody gave up on me, he didn't wait."

"Well, I'm not going to sleep with you, if you're worried about history repeating," John said.

Jessica laughed sadly and shook her head again. "Not that, not exactly," she said. "But I've watched you and Natalie go back and forth for years, John. Patience hasn't exactly been a hallmark of your relationship…and neither has forgiveness, if I'm being blunt."

"When are you not?"

Jessica sighed. "Look, John, I'm not here to criticize you," she said. "I don't know what you want for your relationship with Natalie. I don't know if you just want to coparent or you want to get back together or what. That's not why I'm here. I just…I know she's going to get her memory back at some point, and when she does, it's going to be confusing. I need to know you're going to be there for her when that happens. I need you to promise me that you're not going to give up my sister."

"Jessica, I…"

"Promise me, John," Jessica insisted, standing up to face him. "Promise me you won't give up on Natalie."

"I promise," John said. "I'm not going anywhere, Jessica. I'm not giving up this time."

Jessica was still lost in her own thoughts as she walked out of the Angel Square Hotel a few minutes later. Ever since discovering that Natalie had lost her memory, she'd felt conflicted about her sister, switching between anger and resentment one minute to concern and compassion the next. She still hadn't quite figured out how to reconcile all those feelings, but she at least felt good about getting her worries about their deja vu situation off her chest.

Stepping out of the building, Jessica jumped slightly as she nearly ran into someone walking into the building.

"Mom? What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing, darling," Viki said.

"I, um, I stopped by to see John and Liam," Jessica said. "I figured he'd want to know how Natalie was doing."

"That was very thoughtful of you," Viki said. "I'm sure when your sister is able to understand more, she'll appreciate the gesture."

"I don't know about that," Jessica said. "Why are you here? Did you come to see Liam?"

Viki shook her head. "Not today," she said. "No, I'm here to see Roxy."

"Why?"

"Well, I was talking with your father earlier, and it dawned on me that we haven't seen or heard from her in weeks," Viki said. "She's the only person in this entire town who knew your sister when she was a teenager, and I'm hoping she might be able to help get through to her. I was thinking of inviting her to come to dinner tonight."

Jessica nodded. "Makes sense," she said. "Come on, I'll go with you."

"Absolutely not! No way!"

Viki and Jessica both frowned and exchanged a look of surprise at Roxy's unexpected outburst as they stood in her apartment a few minutes later.

"Roxy, come on," Jessica said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. "Look, I've been where Natalie is right now, and confusing doesn't even begin to describe it. When I thought I was a teenager, all I wanted was to see familiar people, people who knew me as the me I thought I still was. It's why I pushed Natalie and Brody away. Natalie needs to see a familiar face."

"Yeah, well, it ain't gonna be me," Roxy said. "Trust me, if you're looking for something to comfort her, it's not me."

"Please, Roxanne, won't you just try?" Viki pleaded. "There's no one else in this whole town who knew her then. I know you two had a difficult relationship when she was growing up, but I still think it's worth a try."

"You said she thinks she's sixteen?" Roxy asked, waiting until Viki nodded. "Yeah, no, not happening. She definitely didn't want to see me back then, she definitely doesn't want to see me now."

"Roxy…"

"No," Roxy insisted. "Look, I want to help Natty, I really do. But you gotta believe me, I am not what you're looking for here. That time she's in now, in her head, yeah, that was a bad time for us."

"Roxy, why don't you just come talk to her?" Jessica suggested. "Just come over for a little bit, see how she reacts."

"No, you don't understand," Roxy said. "When I say a bad time, I mean it. A lot of that year is blurred in vodka, but I remember enough to know that she don't want to see me."

"But she's your daughter," Jessica pointed out. "In her head, right now, you're still her mother. Every daughter wants to see their mother when they're scared."

"Not that one," Roxy said.

"Roxy…" Jessica began, pausing when Viki put her hand on her forearm to silence her.

"Hold on," Viki said, a thought suddenly occurring to her. "She's sixteen. Why is she acting like she's already run away?"

"What do you mean?" Roxy asked nervously.

"I didn't put the pieces together until just now, but this afternoon when I was talking to her, Natalie said that the last thing she remembers is living in a shelter," Viki said. "And she mentioned a suitcase that she used when she left your house."

"Yeah, well, you knew she left," Roxy said, shifting slightly in her seat.

"The first time I met you, that day I went down to Atlantic City, when we thought you could be Jessica's mother," Viki said. "You told me that you hadn't seen Natalie in two years."

"So? What's your point?"

"So two years before I met her would have made her nineteen," Viki said. "But right now, Natalie thinks she's sixteen and she thinks she's already run away from you."

"She's messed up in the head right now, why do you expect things to make sense?" Roxy asked, suddenly acting extremely nervous and defensive.

"No, this she was pretty clear on," Viki said, practically staring down Roxy at this point as the pieces began to click in her mind. "She wasn't nineteen when she left, was she? How old was she when she ran way?"

"Look, I…"

"Roxanne," Viki said sternly. "The truth. Now."

Roxy sighed, knowing she'd lost the battle. "Fifteen," she admitted quietly. "She was fifteen, okay? You happy now?"

"Fifteen," Viki repeated. "My God, Roxy, she was a child."

"Yeah, well, you knew I wasn't mother of the year," Roxy said.

"Wouldn't there have been a police report?" Jessica asked. "When she didn't show up for school, someone would have reported that, filed a missing persons report or a truancy report or something."

"Maybe here they would," Roxy said. "Where we lived, not so much. People came and went all the time. If a girl suddenly stopped showing up, she probably either moved or got knocked up…sometimes both. No one batted an eyelash."

"Including you," Viki pointed out. "You were her mother, Roxanne. How could you not have gone to the police the minute she went missing? Were you sure she ran away? Did you even look for her?"

"It wasn't the first time she'd done this," Roxy protested. "Usually she'd get mad, run off for a couple of days, a week or two at most. I just figured this was the same, that one day I'd come home and there she'd be, pouring my booze down the drain again, complaining about one thing or another. How was I supposed to know it was gonna be six years before she showed up again?"

"Where was she?" Jessica asked, as much to her mother as to Roxy. "And why would you lie about when she left?"

Viki felt a heavy weight on her heart as Jessica asked the question and the truth suddenly dawned on her. "You were still getting paid," she said knowingly. "The day we first met, you asked me if I was with social services. And later on, you flat out told me the only reasons you kept Natalie as a child was so you could collect welfare checks for her. You didn't file a missing persons report because you didn't want anyone to know she was gone. You were still collecting benefits for Natalie all those years, weren't you?"

"A girl's gotta eat, am I right?" Roxy asked. "Listen, we all know I was a crap mother. Let's not act like this is some hot new info off the pressers here, ladies."

"I can't believe you would do that to her," Jessica said. "You didn't even know for sure that she ran away. For all you knew, she could have been kidnapped or murdered and dead somewhere, and no one was looking for her because you wanted to keep collecting checks."

"I don't care if you can believe it or not," Roxy said. "But can you at least get that she wouldn't want to see me?"

"You couldn't…" Jessica began.

"Honey, I think it's time we go," Viki said, placing her hand on Jessica's elbow.

"But…"

"Let's go home," Viki said, carefully steering Jessica out of Roxy's apartment.

"Mom, I wasn't done in there," Jessica said as Roxy slammed the door behind them. "What she did…"

"Was awful and cruel and unacceptable," Viki agreed. "I know. But at some point in the last ten years, it seems that your sister forgave her for it, she'd have had to for them to have the sort of relationship they do now. I'm not ready to do that yet, but if we'd stayed any longer, I think one of us was going to hit Roxanne, and neither of us would be any help to Natalie from jail."