Because I made a promise to a few buddies to get a final chapter up before the New Year, here this is, written at the speed of light.

I hope it's good! If it isn't, I'll simply rewrite when I'm sobered up.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Promises, Pasts, and Comebacks

Sam laughed harder than she had in a long time as she closed her mother's door listening to her mother scream at her. She was well aware that she was going to pay dearly for what she did, but she needed a good laugh before speaking to her father.

As she stood at the door for a few moments longer attempting to regain her composure, Mac walked up to her holding an ice pack and an ace bandage.

--- "So, is she ready?"

Sam took one look at the man and began laughing again.

--- "Ah, setting the mood I see? Great! She sure is ready for you! Go right in!"

She opened the door for the man.

Alexis saw Sam laughing hysterically.

--- "Samantha McCall! Get in here, right now!"

Being quite incorrigible, Sam shook her head and simply blew her mother a kiss and closed the door. Alexis blew her bangs upwards as Mac smiled at her.

--- "Please remind me to kill that girl next time she comes in here."

He walked over and sat down on the chair.

--- "Only if you remind me to glue Maxie's mouth shut."

She put her hand out to him so that he could shake it.

--- "You've got a deal."

To prevent any further embarrassment on her part, she decided to clue Mac into Sam's actions before he noticed it himself.

--- "Um, I have to tell you something before you notice it yourself. But first, you have to promise me not to laugh."

Mac noticed that she was blushing so he nodded his head.

--- "Okay, but I have to say that I'm not really good at keeping this type of promise. Usually when someone asks you not to laugh about something, it's because it really is rather funny—"

--- "Or highly embarrassing. Just promise me, you will not laugh."

He put up his two fingers up.

--- "Fine, Scout's Honor. Whatever it is that you're going to tell me, and despite how funny it might be, I'll sooner bite my tongue off than laugh at you."

Alexis gave him a quick glare before letting out a sigh and pointing to her dresser.

--- "Sam thought it would be funny to put a condom on my dresser since you were coming in here to finish our date—"

Mac immediately felt an urge to laugh, so he bit his lip and walked to the dresser as Alexis continued.

--- "I swear, I don't know where that girl gets such ideas. I mean, it's not like I'm someone that really is promiscuous or anything like that, or would even think about having sex with anyone with all of these people under my roof! Honestly, I don't even know why I have the damned things in my drawer—"

He stood at the dresser fighting the need to laugh.

--- "Lex—"

Alexis, being the rambler, paid no mind to the fact that he was trying to interrupt.

--- "I swear Mac, those things must be from the year of the flood… clearly not MY flood or anything, because if those come, and I have to say, they're quite infrequent, they're more like leaky faucets—"

--- "Lex—"

--- "You know, those things are probably more dried up than my breast milk—"

She blushed at her comment.

--- "Alexis—"

And yet she continued to mindlessly ramble.

--- "You know what? Even if we attempted to use those things, and I'm not saying that we ever would… although we would of course use SOMETHING, they probably would disintegrate on contact—"

Mac dared not look in her direction as his eyes burned from fighting the urge to laugh but he could no longer contain himself; he laid his head onto the dresser and laughed hysterically. Alexis was not pleased.

--- "I thought you said you wouldn't laugh at me! What the hell happened to your Scout's honor?!"

She threw her other pillow at him, missing him entirely.

--- "You're horrible and a disgrace to the Boy Scout's of America, Malcolm Scorpio!"

He wiped the tears from his eyes and held his hands up in surrender.

--- "Alexis, I'm sorry, but catch—"

He tossed the item he had found on the dresser to her. He would have walked it over, but seeing as she was liable to throw something else at him, or conk him over the head with the bottle of wine she had on the nightstand beside her, he figured it safe to keep his distance.

Alexis surprisingly caught it and blushed redder than she ever thought possible. In her hands was an individually wrapped orange gummy lifesaver. She covered her face in absolute embarrassment.

--- "I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed in my life."

Mac figured he could safely walk toward her and winked.

--- "What about the other day. I mean, I saw you in your full glory—"

Alexis chuckled and pointed to him… well, not exactly to him, per se.

--- "And I saw you standing at attention to that glory. All we needed were fireworks and it would've been the Fourth of July."

He joined in her laughter, although his ears burned slightly.

--- "Yea, well, it would've been a good one."

She smiled at him and held up the bottle of wine.

--- "Here, open this."

--- "Are you sure about that? I mean, the last time—"

She rolled her eyes at him. She figured she would, for once, take Diane's… influence… to heart.

--- "Come on, Mac."

He looked at her skeptically.

--- "You are aware that it's barely ten in the morning, don't you?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

--- "Hey, it's five o'clock somewhere. Plus, we've got the whole day left with these people: You, with Matt, me, with my insolent children, one who may not, after this joke, survive the whole day. I don't know about you, but I'm due a drink."

He laughed and nodded his head in agreement.

--- "I guess you're right. And you mustn't forget my daughter—"

Alexis smirked.

--- "How could I ever? Even if anyone did, she certainly would find a way to remind us all that she were here."

--- "I'm sure she'll have quite a bit to say and reveal—"

Alexis sighed as she thought about her daughter who was undoubtedly talking to her father in that moment.

--- "Hopefully it won't be something that hurts someone else."

Mac shook his head embarrassed at his daughter's actions.

--- "I really am sorry about that, Lex."

She looked at him and gave him a slight smile.

--- "You know what, you've nothing to apologize for, Mac. Now, we said that we wouldn't spend our time talking about our kids, so, let's get off that topic and crack open this bottle."

He took it from her hands.

--- "That is more than fine with me. What do you want to talk about?"

She thought for a moment.

--- "Well, seeing as you were such a bad boy, and you know how much I love my bad boys—"

He pointed his finger at her and he laughed.

--- "I'm certainly not anywhere near the realm of the type of men that you've dated in the past—"

She tapped her glass waiting for him to fill it up. He quickly opened the bottle and poured her a large glass.

--- "That, you're not, but who says that I have to date a man who's currently a bad boy. I mean, look at you! You threw poop and piss at someone!"

Mac stared at her in disbelief; he had never heard her speak so… colloquially.

--- "Wow, Lex, are you sure that you didn't have some wine before I came in here? Poop and piss isn't exactly something I ever thought was in your vocabulary!"

She smirked.

--- "NO! I'm just embracing the idea of loosening up. I'm going to prove to everyone that I can be loose."

Mac took a sip of his wine as he laughed to himself. Alexis smacked the bed.

--- "Are you laughing at me, Commissioner?"

--- "Actually, I just thought of a comeback to what you just said—"

--- "Well, what is it?"

He knew that the last time he had made a comment without thinking, Alexis had refused to speak to him; he was not sure if he wanted to take the chance again.

--- "Do you have anything around you that you might be compelled to throw at me?"

She put her glass onto the nightstand beside her, showed him her hands, and then proceeded to sit on them.

--- "I'm going to keep my hands just like this. If I have the need to throw anything at you, you'll have more than enough time to duck and dive—"

---"Geez, thanks Lex, I feel safe now!"

She laughed at him.

--- "Will you just tell me your great comeback!?"

He placed his glass on the nightstand and walked to the door for precautionary measure. She rolled her eyes.

--- "Oh come on! I'm not going to hurt you!"

Mac shook his head and remained in his spot.

--- "Okay. Well, you know how you were saying that you were trying to loosen up?"

--- "Yeeeah?"

He placed his hand on the doorknob.

--- "So, I was going to say that you needed to be careful not to get too loose because your uterus was already hanging on by a thread. We wouldn't want it to fall out or anything."

Alexis stared at him for a moment before she began to laugh at him.

--- "THAT was your comeback? Come sit down, crazy. That was ridiculously corny. You know that? You might want to get Diane to tutor you or something because that was horrible."

He shrugged his shoulders as he walked back to his seat.

--- "Hey, I said I had a comeback, I never said it was any good. AND I'm sure that if I hadn't been so afraid that you would go all Cassadine on me, and just said it in the moment, then it would've been better!"

She reached for her glass and shook her head.

--- "You're a funny man, Mr. Scorpio, funny indeed."

He watched her as she took a sip of her drink.

--- "You know, it really is perplexing to me why you're single, Lex. You're a beautiful woman, who clearly has a sense of humor, and three great daughters. You're intelligent and accomplished. What's not to love?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

--- "I could tell you the same thing, Mac. However, in my case, the men who love me, or claim to have loved me, are lunatics and mass murderers who end up dead, presumed dead, in jail, or on their way there. I just attract those type of men."

--- "I'm attracted to you and I'm not any of those things."

She laughed and took another sip of her drink.

--- "Who knows, maybe my luck is changing. One ride on the magical carpet and you might start singing a different tune. What about you?"

--- "What about me?"

She made a face at him.

--- "What do you mean, what about you? You know the type of men that I attract, what do you attract?"

He rubbed his face and thought.

--- "Let's see, the type that abandons her children? And… yea. That's about it. It's been a long time, Alexis. It seems for the past few years, I've been attached to my gun."

Alexis stared blankly at him.

--- "Well, I hope you weren't unloading it too much, we wouldn't want you to end up shooting blanks!"

Mac looked down and began to chuckle; he opened the door, and she kicked it open.

--- "Wow, Lex."

She smiled at him.

--- "And THAT, Commissioner, was a comeback."

He pointed to her.

--- "I'll give you that. I don't know how great it was, but it was certainly well-timed."

She rolled her eyes at him and smiled.

--- "Whatever!"

He returned the smile.

--- "Now, how about we have a toast, dimples?"

He raised his glass to her. She did the same.

--- "Here is to new beginnings."

After Sam closed the door, leaving Mac and her mother to their date, she found Mathieu standing in the hall waiting for her.

--- "Hi."

He smiled nervously at her.

--- "Hi back."

She slowly walked toward him, rubbing her hands together. She concentrated on trying to not become defensive, and instead on being open and honest with him.

--- "So, do you want to go to my room so we can talk?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

--- "I will go wherever you like, Samantha. I want you to be comfortable."

She nodded her head and walked what seemed like the long distance to the other side of the house where her room was located.

When they finally arrived, she offered him a seat on her couch and sat on her bed, facing him; she was not yet ready to sit too closely to him, lest her mother's belief in him was misguided.

--- "Okay, here we go."

She explained her life from A-Z to the man, leaving out the part concerning her drunken tryst with her mother's baby. She explained how her adoptive mother was a hateful and spiteful woman who did not give her the time of day, and how her father took advantage of her early bodily formation as child by having her con men for men. She told him of the facts leading her into Port Charles and the amount of things she had on her police record. She told him about anything and everything of which she could possibly think. Then she got to the topic of Lila.

--- "Mathieu, when Lila was conceived, I had no idea that Alexis was my mother. I knew that she had a child with Sonny, but I didn't even know at that time that I was adopted. So, even though Sonny was married at the time, he and I still… you know… and I got pregnant with my baby. Regardless of anything, that child meant the world to me. At that time, Jason and I were not yet a couple, and she was all I had left of a family. I mean, I still had Danny, but he was in a special school that could cater to his needs better than I could. That baby was everything to me."

She began to tear up as she remembered her daughter. Despite his reservations and fears that the woman might reject him, Mathieu moved from the couch to the bed and put his arm around his daughter to comfort her; to his relief, she allowed him in and continued to speak.

--- "And because of her, everything began to fall into place for me. Sonny and I obviously could not work out, but I was living with Jason, and he helped me through the pregnancy. He and I didn't start actually dating for a good while, so it wasn't like I jumped from one bed into the other, as was my custom then—"

Mathieu gave her a slight squeeze.

--- "Don't talk about yourself like that, ma belle. You were young and misguided."

She pulled away from him so that she could look at the man.

--- "That's no excuse for the things I've done, Mathieu. I knew right and wrong. I knew it was wrong to steal from people, and yet I still did it. I knew it was wrong to sleep with another woman's man or husband; and there I was jumping in bed with them. I'm not proud of my past, I'm ashamed—"

He shook his head and took her hands into his.

--- "Cherie, don't be ashamed of your past. It's what makes you, you."

She rolled her eyes at him.

--- "A con?"

He sighed and shook his head once more.

--- "No. From what I hear from that loud mouth friend of yours, you're a wonderful private investigator. It seems to me that you've used the skills you learned as a child for good—"

--- "To track down cheating husbands. I'm Mother Teresa."

He looked at her for a moment. He could not believe that life had dealt such difficult cards to the perfect child he and his Alexandra had created. His anger at his parents, at her adoptive parents, at Alexis' father, was overwhelming.

--- "Can I tell you something about my past? Maybe it will help you?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

--- "Sure, if you like."

He stood up and walked around the room.

--- "Alors… where to begin."

He thought for a moment before speaking.

--- "On that day you grandparents ruined our lives, they took me back to Europe and placed me in a boarding school in Switzerland. I was a terror. I trashed my room, vandalized the halls, stole the professors' cars, smoked marijuana, broke into other students' rooms, and did some other horrible things. I had sex like crazy—"

Sam smiled and interrupted him.

--- "I know you're trying to share a bit about yourself, but there is a such thing as sharing to much, Mathieu. The same way I don't want to talk about my mother's sex life with my mother, is the same way I could do without yours."

He frowned at her.

--- "From the conversations I've been hearing in this house, it seems that's all you ladies talk about."

She shook her head and smiled.

--- "No, not quite. We actually are making FUN of Mom. We're not exactly discussing the logistics of it all. But please, carry on! You were vandalizing, and stealing cars? So you know how to hotwire?"

Mathieu sat on the bed beside her and laughed a bit.

--- "I can hotwire a car in less than thirty second, ma belle."

She snapped her fingers at him.

--- "HA! Less than twenty."

He shook his head.

--- "Well, perhaps you would have had some of this past life regardless of whether or not your mother and I raised you. You might have it in your genes… You know, nature vs. nurture."

Sam shrugged.

--- "I don't know, maybe you're right."

He smiled at her before continuing.

--- "I know you don't want to hear about sex, but I will tell you this: when we were in school in Maine, the way I got back into my dormitory at night after spending some time with your mother was by picking the locks to the building. They used to lock us inside! Like ANIMALS! So, I would sneak out of my room whenever the evening staff changed to the overnight staff. Then when I returned, I would wait for the guard to go on break, pick the locks and sneak back to my room. They NEVER caught me!"

Sam laughed and shook her head.

--- "So, I guess my mother has always liked bad boys. It doesn't seem like you're a murderer or anything, but you certainly aren't Mr. Clean."

He shrugged his shoulders.

--- "I suppose you're right. But my point to you, Samantha, is that everyone has a past; some more interesting than others, but it is still a past. I've done things that I'm not proud of either, but I grew up and I changed. I went to medical school and graduated at the top of my class. The way it looks to me, you've done the same thing. You used the things you learned for bad, to help you do good. Maxie was telling me that your sister ran away and you found her—"

Sam covered her face; she was grateful that no one aside from her family and Sonny knew the real reason Kristina had run away.

--- "Yes."

He took her hand into his once more.

--- "So you see, it's not your past that matters, it's what you do with it that is important."

It was a strange thing to relate to, but Sam did. She would have never thought a distinguished doctor such as her father would have such a colorful past.

--- "So I take it that you're not ashamed to have me as a daughter?"

He gave her a kiss on either cheek.

--- "How could I be ashamed of you? It seems that you and I are alike in many ways."

Sam felt tears roll down her cheeks as she leaned in to give him a hug.

--- "Thank you… Dad."

Sam and Mathieu walked hand in hand toward Alexis' room just as Mac was leaving. He smiled at the young woman.

--- "I was just coming to get you."

Sam bit her lip; she had a feeling that her mother had send him for her.

--- "Why?"

--- "She said you should know why."

Sam nervously looked at Mac.

--- "Come on! Was she angry? It was a joke!"

He winked at Sam as he walked into the living room. Mathieu scowled at the man before turning his attention back to his daughter.

--- "Do you want me to go with you?"

She thought that it might be a good idea, but at the same time she did not need to be embarrassed by the man if her mother had any ideas looming in her head.

--- "Um, I think I'll be fine; she can't be too mad. I mean, I've done much worse than what I did today. Just, if I don't come back within the next five minutes, come and find me."

He nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek. While he wanted to know what she had done, he figured that she would come to him if she needed a clean escape.

--- "Anything for you, ma belle."

She bit her lip and smiled. She was beginning to think that having two parents might be a great thing.

Happy New Year! Be safe and drink plenty… if you're of age.