THE QUALITY OF   by Jayne Leitch
C. 2001

~~All the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone
~~They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on
~~And they brought me their comfort, and later they brought me this song
~~Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long...

     Cool white light beamed through the window of the boathouse, and Zander felt like
diving into the moon.

     Emily was smiling at him.  Emily was touching him.  Emily was holding him, kissing
him.  She was making his throat close up and his hands tremble; the way she looked right
now was making him want to dive into *her*.  It was all about Emily.  Had always been
all about Emily.  His Emily...

     Emily was blushing lightly, her eyes turned downward, her long black lashes fluttering
against her cheek.  Zander reached up and cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

     Slowly.

     She was silky curves and roughened gooseflesh under his fingertips.  Pale, smooth,
parts of her glistening with water from their swim, parts of her still swaddled in the thick,
fluffy towel they shared.  Her lips parted against his, and he felt her breath flow over his
skin as they pulled apart and opened their eyes.

     She was beautiful.  She was shy and bold and ready and hesitating all in one perfect
moment, and he loved her.

     He realized then that he could break her completely.  She was connected to him in
some complicated way that he was sure she didn't understand any better than he did, but
if he understood anything at all, it was that right then he could just *twist*, and she
would be broken forever...

     He breathed out and wrapped her hair around his fingers.  He would never do that to
her.  Could never do that to her.  She wasn't like any of the others.

     She was waiting for him, lips parted, heavy-lidded, breathless.

     He felt blessed as the water cooled from his skin, and he murmured an offering of
thanks into her mouth.

~~You who must leave everything that you cannot control
~~It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul
~~I've been where you're hanging; I think I can see how you're pinned
~~When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness tells you you've sinned...

     Sonny poured himself another drink and watched the dark gold liquid curl into itself
as it fell away from the sides of the glass.

     As he turned away from the bar he kept his eyes low, so he couldn't see the bare place
on the wall where the mirror had been.  Instead he studied his feet as they wandered
across the floor towards the window; the shine of the moon flowed over the blackness of
his shoes like light on water.  It was almost hypnotic.

     His arm moved without any conscious thought on his part, and he found the glass at
his lips.  A bit of a tilt, the soft sound of the crystal rubbing on his skin, and the warm,
rich bite of scotch was in his mouth, smoothing over his tongue for a long, bitter moment
before he swallowed and felt the burn move down his throat.  Then again.  Once more
and the glass was empty.

     His arm dropped to his side, and he felt the dull thud of the crystal against his leg.
Out the window, the moon shone above the brightly speckled lights of the city, a huge
white disc in the middle of a black sky tinged violet and navy.

     Sonny stared out the window for a while, his mind blank until he realized that his
glass was, indeed, empty.  Without thinking any further, his feet began to move, and a
moment later he found himself at the bar again, one hand wrapped around the long neck
of the scotch decanter.

     He blinked, and set it down without pouring.  He didn't want another drink.

     The silence of the penthouse pounded around his ears, and he moved away from the
bar with quick, deliberate steps designed to fill the huge space with the sharp tap of his
shoes on the hard floor.  Sharp, hard, repeating...

     His mind's eye opened onto a snowy evening filled with laughter.  Two kids playing in
the snow, giddy, two adults wandering sedately behind the excitement, sharing their own
merriment with easy smiles and sparkling eyes.  One of the kids spun away from the
handful of snow that was destined to be shoved down his jacket, grabbing the girl in a
huge, rambunctious hug as he turned to share their joke with the adults--

     Sonny flinched as the barrage of machine gun fire hammered through his head.  He
could feel the bullets slamming into him, feel the blood begin to run over his skin and
onto the cold, hard ground beneath him...he could feel the collision of bodies as he fell
onto Alexis and knocked her down...but it wasn't Alexis anymore, and it wasn't him that
was bleeding...

     He felt the glass in his hand and concentrated on it, squeezing his eyes shut against the
sight of messy blonde hair and pale skin divided by rivulets of blood.  The feel of the
crystal against his palm solidified, and he clenched his fingers around the object as hard
as he dared, reminding himself that it was real, it was there, and so was he.  And she...

     When he opened his eyes, she was there too.

     He stared at her for a moment, coolly, then deliberately turned his back on her and
strode back to the bar.  He made himself set the glass down very slowly and carefully,
then used the same iron-clad control to pick up the decanter and pour.  If he slipped, even
for a fraction of a second, she would be able to speak to him...

     His hand shook, and the stopper chimed nervously against the crystal.  In that second
he watched a car blow up, drove away from a church, held a sobbing teenager, heard
someone call him Father, crouched over a woman crumpled at the bottom of a staircase,
lay on an icy sidewalk choking on blood, stared into a ticking box with a child reaching
for the ribbon, and fucked a lying goddess he couldn't keep his hands off of.  In that
second...he slipped.

     Behind him, she spoke.  "Sonny..."

     He slipped again when he wished he had the gun.

~~They lay down beside me; I made my confession to them
~~They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem
~~If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
~~They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem...

     "Not the best bedtime story I ever told, but I'm still working on the ending."

     Lesley Lu slept on as Luke turned away, her long, dark lashes fluttering gently against
her cheek as she dreamed...something.

     He didn't know how to protect her.  Helena was out there, Stefan, maybe even Faison,
the way that man escaped death--one child had already been dragged into the war, and
Luke had no idea how to keep the other one out of it.  Wasn't sure if he should even try
anymore.

     A few years ago, he knew, he'd have had a hell of a time trying to make himself care
enough--wholeheartedly enough--to save his baby girl from the Cassadines.  A few years
ago, he knew, he'd have considered her one of them already.

     It was stupid.  *He* was stupid, and as he stepped up to the window and stared out at
the moon as it lit up the leaves of the tree under LuLu's window, he was ashamed of
himself for even bothering with that old injury again.  The little girl in the bed behind
him was his daughter, a Spencer, just like Lucky, and she deserved a father who would
fight to his last breath to keep her safe.

     Not one who flinched at the idea of the kind of blood running through her veins.
Thank God he'd figured out enough about himself to be able to walk away from that
ignorant hatred.

     He'd always felt distant from LuLu, he knew that.  The bond that he had--past tense,
he reminded himself instinctively--the bond that he used to have with Lucky hadn't
duplicated itself between father and daughter, and he used to blame that on the anemia,
on what she'd needed to get better and who she'd eventually gotten it from.  Luke
Spencer's daughter, saved by the blood of a Cassadine bastard.  Had he actually been
expected to get over that?

     It was a rhetorical question.  Of course he was supposed to get over it--there wasn't
even supposed to be an it to get over--because she was his *daughter*.  He was supposed
to love her, regardless of what she had in her, who had helped her, why he hadn't been
able to.  He'd made himself forget that for a while, so he could tell himself that he had a
reason to keep on hating the Cassadines.  They'd taken his child away from him, made
her less than his.  If that wasn't reason for maintaining the vendetta, what was?

     He hadn't known then that children could be taken away more thoroughly than she'd
ever been.

     He'd realized how stupid he'd been a long time ago, but the knowledge hadn't helped
any.  Instead, he'd just redoubled his anger at the damned Cassadines, for making him
feel that way about his own flesh and blood.  As long as there was a new hatred to
replace the old one, it didn't much matter what he let go of, did it?

     She was his daughter, and he'd wasted years being too angry to be there for her.  How
had that happened?  She was a *Spencer*.  She was *his*...

     ...But she'd been Laura's more.

     After Luke had stopped being angry, he'd started thinking.  From the beginning, he'd
had Lucky--his Cowboy, the kid who, from the second he'd entered the world and been
placed in his Dad's arms, positively *glowed* with whatever goodness Luke had ever had
in him.  He had been the person Luke had always wanted to be, and somehow that
common existence had forged a relationship that withstood anything life had thrown at it.
Sure, Laura had been close with the boy...but when it was all said and done, Lucky was
*Luke's* son.

     When Lesley Lu was born, of course Luke had held her and seen that glow of purity,
belied by the curve of the cheek or turn of the nose that said I am a Spencer.  But from
the very beginning, she'd been more Laura's child than his.  He loved her, he was
protective of her, he'd felt all those proper, fatherly feelings...but somehow, he had
known that the closeness he felt with Lucky wasn't going to develop with LuLu.  And that
had worried him a little, because he was supposed to feel the same things for each kid.
He wasn't supposed to be closer to one than the other.  There had to be a reason for that
distance...

     Laura and LuLu had bonded almost instantly, and Luke had discovered that he'd been
*jealous*.  And again, he had wanted there to be some reason, some explanation for the
way he was feeling; when the Cassadines resurfaced and provided one, who was he to
argue?  She'd been made a little less Spencer, and that was all the justification he'd
needed.

     He'd been an idiot.  He knew that.  His daughter wasn't exactly the same child as his
son, and there were going to be differences in how he related to each of them.  The
Cassadines, for once, had nothing to do with it; that particular mistake was his and his
alone, and he was finally going to be able to atone for it...

     ...But he didn't know exactly how.

     A breeze rustled the leaves, and Luke caught a glimpse of a streetlamp highlighting a
wan circle of pavement across the street.  It was too late for Lucky; he'd been taken
already, and all Luke could do now was pick up the pieces and figure out how to keep
him from being lost completely.  LuLu, though--LuLu he could protect.  He'd failed her
enough in her short lifetime; he wasn't going to mess up again, even if that meant wading
up to his chin into Cassadine hell.  That damned family had taken his wife, his son, his
diamond, and his peace of mind; it was time for him to take something back.

     "You're too young to know it now, LuLu..."  He had to try.  For his daughter.

     "...But some monsters are real."

~~When I left they were sleeping.  I hope you run into them soon
~~Don't turn on the light; you can read their address by the moon
~~And you won't make me jealous, if I hear that they sweetened your night
~~We weren't lovers like that, and besides it would still be all right.

     The moon was a perfect circle on the smooth glass surface of the water.

     Zander held Emily a little tighter against him, and brushed his lips across the crown of
her head.  She sighed gently in her sleep.

     She could have broken him completely, he knew that now.  He also knew that, unlike
him, the thought to do so would never occur to her.  It wasn't possible; she wasn't like
him.  She was for moments like this, when the water was still and the air just cool enough
to make the huge warm blanket they were wrapped in necessary.  She was for this quiet,
peaceful moment at three-thirty in the morning, hours after making love, when she
trusted him so entirely that she could sleep wrapped in his arms, even after everything he
had done to her.

     She had done that to him.  And he loved her for it.

     He smiled, and let his head rest against hers.

End.

'Sisters of Mercy' by Leonard Cohen.

Go back to General Hospital Fic.