Sam was sitting at the coffee table doing her homework when Alexis came home from work. She was working on a new math concept that Jax was helping her with, while Kristina sat curled on the couch reading from her English lit. book. Alexis smiled at the sight that greeted her. "Hello family." She greeted as she walked over to places kisses on heads and her favorite pair of lips.
"Hi Mom." Sam replied without looking up from her textbook. "How was your day?"
Alexis smiled as she replied, "It was fine, sweetheart." Hearing Sam call her mom was like receiving a gift every time she said it. "Thank you for asking. How was yours?"
"Bearable." Sam replied. She had yet to become a fan of school.
Jax smiled up at Alexis and said, "I thought I would take all my lovely ladies out for dinner tonight."
"That sounds wonderful." Alexis agreed. "Let me run upstairs to freshen up and change."
Sam continued to work on her last problem and was just finishing it when there was a blood curdling scream from upstairs. Her head snapped up as her big brown eyes went wide. "Oh no!" She shot to her feet and bolted upstairs. A few seconds later Alexis ran down the stairs and jumped up on the couch while Kristina and Jax looked on in a mix of amusement and concern.
"Alexis?" Jax asked as he reached out to her.
"There's a rat!" Alexis screamed as she clung to Jax as if he would save her from the animal.
When Sam came down the stairs she was holding a black and white rat in her arms. When she saw the look on her mother's face she quickly said, "It's alright Mom! He won't hurt you."
"It's a rat!" Alexis screamed.
Sam frowned. "His name is Ric, Ric the Rat; and your scaring him."
"I'm scaring him?" Alexis shouted in disbelief. "I'm scaring him!"
"Yes, you are." Sam said firmly. "Please stop screaming."
"It's a rat, Samantha!" Alexis yelled at her daughter and shuttered in disgust.
Sam rolled her eyes as she set Ric on her shoulder. "He's a fancy rat, Mom, a pet rat. He isn't going to hurt you."
"Samantha!" Alexis hissed in revulsion. "Stop touching it!"
"Alexis." Jax said calmly while Kristina was turning red from holding in her laughter. "Calm down. Ric is a class pet and it's Sam's weekend to look after him. He's clean, safe, and I'm sure Sam won't let him out of his cage again; will you Sam?"
Sam shook her head. "He'll stay in my room; in his cage, I promise." She would just have to be more careful because clearly she hadn't gotten his cage secured which is why he'd been in the hall near her mother's bedroom door.
"Hey!" Kristina said in protest, her inward battle at not laughing at her sister wiped clean by her niece's statement. "I don't want that thing in my room!"
"He's not a thing!" Sam argued. "And it's my room too!"
Alexis' mother mode kicked in when the girls started to argue. "It…"
"Ric!" Sam huffed.
Alexis tried hard not to roll her eyes. "Ric, can stay in the laundry room, but just for the weekend. I want that thing out of my house first thing Monday morning. Are we clear?"
Sam didn't like it but she knew it was the best she would get. "Fine."
"I'll help you move his cage." Jax said as he heading upstairs with Sam. He smirked when he heard Sam mumble something about a bunch of sissy girls.
After dinner Jax went home and Kristina went out with her friends, leaving Sam and Alexis alone to spend some time together. On their way home from renting movies Alexis decided to drive past the lake. They were heading down Lake Road when Sam suddenly sighed.
"What's wrong?" Alexis asked as she took a moment to look at her daughter in the back seat through the rear view. "Sam?"
"Nothing." Sam said as they drove. She'd been looking at all the houses and hadn't meant to sigh. She was just thinking how lucky these people were to live so close to the lake.
Alexis bit her lip. She watched as Sam looked out the window at the passing houses. "Have you ever lived in a house, Sam?" It broke her heart that she even had to ask that.
Sam shook her head. "No, small apartments, motel rooms, trailers, Cody's car."
Tears burned Alexis' eyes. She swallowed the lump in her throat and slowed down so she could blink a few times to force the tears away. "It's pretty out here."
Sam nodded, a sad, small smile appearing on her face. It was silly for her to feel like this. She lived in a big beautiful penthouse with her very own mom and aunt. She had a clean, warm bed, clean clothes, plenty of food, and things to do. She didn't need anything else, but the thought of a house was still nice. "I bet it's really cool to live so close to the lake."
"Have you always liked the water?" Alexis asked. She wanted to know as much about her little girl as she could, the good and the bad about Sam's past.
"Yeah." Sam replied. As they turned off and headed up Harbor View towards their building, Sam turned her attention to her mother. "There's just something about it. It's hard to explain."
Alexis smiled at that. When they got home they settled in for a mother-daughter movie night. While Sam was changing into her pjs; Alexis popped popcorn and got their drinks. After she changed into loungewear they cuddled on the couch and popped in the first movie. It was such a simple thing to do and yet for Alexis is was something so much more. It was a new memory she'd have with her daughter.
When the movie ended Sam stretched out on the couch and then laid head in Alexis' lap. She smiled when Alexis started playing with her hair.
"Did you like the movie?" Alexis asked as she looked down at Sam.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, but now I want reese pieces." Sam smiled when Alexis chuckled. Sam had never seen E.T. so that's one of the movies they rented even though Alexis wasn't really a fan. "What kind of movies did you watch when you were a kid? Did they even have movies back then? Did they have movies in Greece?"
"Hey!" Alexis laughed as she tickled Sam's belly. "I'm not that old! And yes, they had movies in Greece."
"Did you have movie nights?" Sam asked as shift so she was lying on her back looking up at her mom. Reaching up she started played with a strand of Alexis' hair.
Alexis shook her head slightly. "We didn't really have a communal television on the island. Mikkos had one in his study, Helena had one, and Stavros."
"But not you or Stefan?" Sam asked.
"Nope, not us." Alexis answered. "We did sneak away to the mainland every so often. When Helena and Stavros were gone Stefan and I would go over to the mainland and spend the day. We'd go to a movie and have a meal, maybe do a little window shopping."
"What kind of movies did you see?" Sam asked. She wanted to know as much about her mother as her mother wanted to know about her. She really loved this chance to spend time alone together.
Alexis chuckled. "Well, I liked the American movies that passed through, but Stefan liked the Russian and Italian movies."
"So Uncle Stefan has always been boring and dull?" Sam asked with a playful chuckle.
It didn't go unnoticed that Sam had just said Uncle Stefan. In fact Alexis was beaming as she poked her little girl playfully, causing her to giggle. "Uncle Stefan is not boring and dull. He's…" She had to pause to think of the right word. "He's just very… European."
Sam rolled her eyes. "Ingrid's European, and Mrs. Q, and they're not boring or dull. Helena's European, and she isn't boring and dull, she's just bat shit crazy."
"Samantha!" Alexis scolded. "Language."
"You're European and your not boring or dull any more." Sam continued after another eye roll. "And Mikkos couldn't have been boring and dull because someone who is boring and dull doesn't try to freeze the world."
Alexis' eyes went wide. "How did you know about that? And what do you mean I'm not anymore?"
Sam smiled brightly. "Mr. Luke told me when I had lunch at his house last week when I went over to see Lucky and Sly's worm farm." She paused, still smiling. "And he said he helped you to loosen up." She added and then asked, "So, you and Uncle Stefan went to see bad movies when Psycho Granny and Stavros-a-sicle were away; what else did you do for fun?"
"Stavros-a-sicle?" Alexis asked with a laugh. "Ok, you're not allowed to spend time with Mr. Luke anymore." She shook her head and then answered, "I read a lot." Alexis answered as she brushed at Sam's dark hair. "I would go out and explore the island." Alexis smiled at one of the few good memories she had of her childhood. "I use to walk all over the island and make up stories about being shipwrecked or about being an archeologist looking for lost ruins."
Sam's dark eyes got bright as she asked, "Really?" Alexis smiled as she nodded. "I do that at Windermere! When I explore the tunnels I make up stories about being on an adventure."
Alexis beamed at her little girl. "Maybe we could explore together and make up a story together?"
"I'd like that." Sam said as she beamed up at her mother. "What else did you do? Did you have a lot of stuff?"
"No, not really." Alexis said with a gentle shake of her head. "I didn't have a lot of toys or anything like that. I had mostly my books and journals, but I did have a couple of things. I had a doll that my mother had given me when I was very small, and I had a stuffed horse, Coco, that belonged to Kristina when she was baby." Alexis paused a moment to keep her voice from cracking. She smiled at Sam to let the girl know that it was ok, that she was alright. Then she continued, "And I had these matryoshka dolls, some people call them babushka dolls, most people in this county call them Russian nesting dolls; anyway, I had a set that once belonged to my Aunt Sophia. Before her they belonged to my grandmother, who'd given them to her only daughter, and since Sophia didn't have any children and I was grandmother's oldest granddaughter Mikkos gave them to me."
"What are they?" Sam asked.
"They're little wooden dolls with smaller dolls inside." Alexis answered and then suddenly sat Sam up. She bounced to her feet and held out her hand. "Come with me."
Sam let her mother lead her upstairs to her bedroom and while Alexis went into her closet to dig around Sam crawled up on her mother's bed. Sam sat on the huge comfortable bed and giggled as she listened to Alexis bang around and hiss a few words in a language Sam didn't know. Several minutes later Alexis came out and walked towards the bed with what looked like a very fancy shoebox to Sam. The girl watched with wide, inquisitive, excited eyes as her mother took the lid off the box and moved some tissue paper out of the way. Dark, yet bright, eyes widen as Alexis lifted out a beautiful wooden, cylindrical doll that was tapered towards the bottom and rounded at the head.
Alexis held the doll out to Sam and smiled when the girl was apprehensive in taking it. "It's ok, take it baby. They're yours now."
Sam blinked as she took the doll as if it were something sacred. "Mine?"
Bright, dark eyes sparkled with welling tears as Alexis realized she was able to pass these on to her daughter. She nodded as she said; "They've always been passed down from mother to oldest daughter."
"It's so beautiful." Sam said softly as she turned the doll over in her hands so she could look at the hand-pained details. It was mostly dark reds, blacks, greens, and blues. There was some weight to it and a gentle knocking sound as she moved it around. She traced her finger over the seam and asked, "How do you open it?"
Alexis took the doll from her daughter's hands and showed her how to open the doll. Inside was a slightly smaller doll with it's own hand-painted look, which she handed to Sam as she put the first back together. She watched with pure joy as her little girl carefully examined each doll before opening it and taking out the next. By the time Sam was finished there were seven wooden dolls spread out in front of them on the bed.
"They're so pretty." Sam said as she looked over each doll again. "Are you sure you want me to have something so special and old?"
"I'm sure, baby." Alexis said as she leaned against her headboard and watched her little girl play with a toy that had been in her family for generations.
Sam was smiling so brightly it lit up the room. "I wish I had a special place to put them." Then she looked up and asked, "Tell me more about our family?"
Alexis smiled. She pulled Sam close and told her about the history, or at least the PG version, of the Cassadines and about what she knew of her mother's family. She answered Sam's questions, and told her more about her own childhood. She knew that it made it easier for Sam to accept her and to connect with her knowing that she'd had a rough start in life too. When Sam fell asleep Alexis put the dolls back together and back in their box and moved it off the bed before climbing in with her daughter and snuggling her. Both Davis girls slept well that night.
The next morning Alexis got up early and was gone when Sam and Kristina awoke. When she got home she closed the door behind her and leaned against it as she looked at Kristina and Lady Jane, who'd come over to watch the girls, with a dazed look on her face.
"Alexis darling are you alright?" Lady Jane asked in concern.
"I just did something exceptionally impulsive." Alexis replied.
"What?" Kristina asked.
Alexis blinked and then looked at her sister. "I bought something."
Kristina looked at her sister oddly. "What did you buy?"
Alexis looked between her sister and Jane for a long moment before answering. "A house."