Furious Bargains   By Antigone       They wouldn't let him in until they needed him. Until they'd run out of options. You'd think there'd be a way to get used to that. Owning the truth that you were destined to be last. The last chance. The last choice. "D" None Of The Above. But there wasn't. Uh-uh. No. No one took the last seat who didn't come bent that they hadn't been seated sooner. No one could be called late to the battle and march lock-step, like a good little soldier, just happy to be given his chance to serve. You got angry with the wait. Angry with the ignorance. Angry with the way they knew they were wrong but would be damned if they'd admit it. He always came angry. He always came enraged. And when people asked the reason for this it took all the strength he could find in that moment to resist the urge to draw back a fist. So he didn't shake a hand here. He didn't nod his head. He just took the chair and waited for the explanation. "We believe it began when she was first diagnosed. You knew her when she was young, yes? You're aware of her history?" His head dipped low, his eyes scanning the carpet at his feet, looking for a place to fix his stare. He had to find a way to control his frustration, to bring this anger to heel. He'd heard his share of doctor-speak and could already tell it was going to be a good long time before anyone got to the point. "Did you know about her mother?" The voice had grown soft with compassion. Christ, he hated that. "Yes." "A tremendous amount of pressure to put upon a child. To be the sole emotional support, the repository of hope, faith, belief. How many promises did she make in the end? To her mother? To herself? To God? Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Furious bargains all, none of which had a prayer of coming through. Still, she had to be strong. She had to be convinced, even when there was doubt. Especially when there was doubt. You and I can understand how that wouldn't have made a difference. Could she?" "I know what she went through. She told me," he snapped, trying to move this along. "She couldn't have told you. She could never have explained it well enough." Resentment curled like a snake in his gut, hissing at the gentle rebuke. No one knew what they had. No one knew what they meant to each other, the way they spoke without needing words. "She got over it. She put it in the past." "No. No, she didn't. She wasn't permitted to. She was passed like a favorite doll from one victim to the next. Crisis to crisis, ordeal to ordeal. Yes, Monica prevailed, but could she trust that? And even if she did, a host of secondary conflicts come into play. Rage over the injustice of her real mother's death and her adoptive mother's survival. The engendering of a dark, likely paranoid suspicion regarding the advantage of wealth over love. Issues of worthiness - her mother's, Monica's, her own - become defining factors in the way she begins to perceive the world, her life, existence itself. Add to this the sudden alteration of identity, answering to the name of Quartermaine and leaving Bowen in the dust…well, it's a testament to her innate sense of self that she managed to retain an identity at all. Not so surprising to find those first few men she was attracted to were solitary - either insulated or isolated from the socialized community-at-large. They mirrored her sense of abandonment. They were outcasts. Misfits. Damaged souls not unlike her own." He shook his head, his jaw clenching in denial. "She wasn't damaged. You're wrong about that. Ask anyone. Ask the family. Edward. Alan. Ned." "Lucky Spencer? You're aware she ran away from home." "She was a kid," he countered dismissively. "She came back." "And acquired a drug addiction. Factor in the torment of Dorman. Kidnapping. A broken back. You say she wasn't appreciably damaged. How can this be possible?" "She's strong. She's the strongest person I know." "That alone should have roused some suspicion." The desk chair squeaked as the man got up and crossed to the sideboard to pour a drink. The glass sailed into his field of vision, hovering there until he waved it away. "Just get on with it. Say what you have to say." Silence. A sigh. The moment passed. "A number of psychological disorders first manifest themselves in college. It's a new environment, a new life. Familial restriction falls by the wayside. Freedom is embraced; political, social and moral examination are actively encouraged. Emotional experimentation as well. Those years often present an individual with the first taste of true independence and that can be an intensely terrifying experience. Still, I suspect she might have thrived there. She might have found the means to buttress those walls that protect us from other people - their wants, their needs, their desire to control. She might actually have come to acknowledge herself as a separate entity, complete in and of herself. I think this might have been possible. But we'll never know now, will we?" "Because that's when she was diagnosed." "Because that's when she was diagnosed with cancer. The same cancer that had haunted her throughout her life." The leather huffed as the doctor fell back into his chair, his dejection plain. "The devil had finally come to claim her. She surrendered without a second thought. She didn't even bother to fight. Her death, as she saw it, was a fait accompli." He rejected this. He had to. It wasn't the Emily he knew. "She went to Mexico," he argued. "She explored alternative medicines." "But only to prolong a life she believed was already over. She needed time to make things right. She needed time to say good-bye. You realize this was her only reason for returning to Port Charles? To say a final farewell to the people that she loved. To ease their grief of her passing. To assure herself they would be okay. Much as her mother had done for her." "But she didn't say good-bye," he contended, his fingers raking through his hair, trying to sift through that past for the truth. "She pushed everyone away. She was lying left and right." "To spare them pain. To spare them an anguish she knew all too well. If I'm not mistaken, her relationship with Nikolas Cassadine was enhanced to service that desire. Consciously designed by both parties to perpetrate what she imagined at the time was a necessary lie. Of course, it had the unexpected effect of luring her toward treatment. Nikolas, Monica, Alan, her friend Elizabeth - the more people she brought into the loop, the more demands were made to do something, anything to fight the disease. This, then, became her gift. The final gift she'd give to those she loved. It's important to remember she never believed she'd survive. She never for an instant entertained the idea that she'd actually prevail." "But she did. She lived. She fought the cancer and she won." "And this, we suspect, was the triggering event. Or non-event, if you will. What was supposed to happen didn't. She wasn't prepared for that. She hadn't even bothered to imagine it. In her mind this eventuality was inconceivable. More than that, it was wrong." He could hear the second hand ticking on a clock somewhere off to his right, the hum of a personal computer, the thin whine of a florescent light, all the while trying to make sense of the idea that beating cancer could be a bad thing. A maddening thing. A thing that could take you over the edge. His mind wouldn't wrap around it, wouldn't give it substance, wouldn't grant it truth. For the first time he looked up into those eyes and searched for an answer. "We don't know precisely when the break occurred. Was it during her recovery from meningitis? Once she was informed of the remission? When she was released from the hospital? It may have been as late as her first week home, when she came to recognize that death was no longer a part of her life. The terminal condition that defined her - motivated every action, justified every lie - had suddenly vanished, simply up and disappeared. And what was she left with? She'd made quite the bed for herself." "You're saying she lost it because she lived? I don't buy that. I can't." "There may indeed have been other contributing factors. All we have to work with is what we've been able to piece together from her actions, her words and the observations of the people around her at the time. We know, for example, that she credited a dream for pulling her back from the precipice of death. Is this the seed or the flowering of her fixation on Nikolas Cassadine? There's no way to be sure. We have hints of dissociative episodes involving pirates. Here she casts herself in the role of Constance Quartermaine, whom she gives every indication is an ancestor of hers. A genetic impossibility, but we've got to look past that and focus on what the story means to her. A child's tale of star-crossed lovers filled with romance and rescue. Is this regression? A cry for help? Hard to tell. We know she latches on to Nikolas' title, referring to him often as a prince. Her prince. Her true and only love, excluding all the men from her past, erasing them, negating their emotional value. He is now The One. The only person she relates to or appears to afford any worth. His sacrifice on the roof of the Port Charles Hotel simply feeds her conviction; his gallant insistence that she take the only remaining seat on that last flight to safety solidifies her conception of herself as the tragic heroine, doomed to lose the man who loves her most. And when he doesn't die, when he walks out of that smoldering wreckage days later and makes his way to his home, she doesn't see this for what it is - one man's drive to save his life. No, he has come back to her, he has survived for her. The delusion is complete." "You're telling me it was all in her mind? The whole relationship with Nikolas? Because it looked pretty real to me." "Difficult to resist a woman who saw you as a man above men. No. No, I suspect Nikolas cared for her. He loved her enough to put a ring on her finger. To ask her to marry him. And then promptly died. Twice. If he hadn't lost his memory there's every reason to believe she'd still be living out that fantasy. And yes, he'd be following along." He'd had enough. More than enough. He didn't want to talk about this anymore. There was only so much he could hear before it all ran together and the pain kicked in. "I want to see her," he demanded, rising from the chair. "I want to see her now." Those eyes narrowed in judgment. He met them without flinching. "You are aware she has no memory of that night? No recollection of the murders? Bring it up and she'll shut down immediately. You'll destroy any chance you may have…we may have…of establishing a therapeutic inroad." "Don't worry," he snorted derisively. "I won't screw it up for you." "That's not what I meant." "Sure it is." Their face-off was brief, the doctor relenting at the last. He was ushered from the office and escorted down the hall to the elevator. Two floors slipped by in silence, the doors opening to the hospital's psychiatric wing. Badges were checked and verifications made as they entered the isolation unit. By the time they reached the monitoring room and he could spot her there behind the glass, his heart was beating like a drum. He was finally here. He would finally see her. Nothing else was more important than that. The doctor's last minute instructions flew past him like so much white noise until a hand fell to his shoulder. "They've told you this already, but it bears repeating. She thinks you're dead. It's one of the reasons they're allowing this visit, in the hope that seeing you will open a door. Now this could go any number of ways. If she becomes overly distressed, I'm trusting you to do the right thing and leave. If she should become violent, I'll call for security. Just back toward the wall and let the orderlies do their work. I'll need your word on this. There's no room for misunderstanding." He nodded slowly. "I thought…I don't know. I guess I thought you'd be coming in with me." "I can't," his father responded. "She believes I'm dead as well." He looked into those worried eyes and offered up the word it had always been hardest for him to say. "Thanks. I mean, I know you didn't have to do this and…well…thanks." It was a step, just a step, but the direction was a good one. He took a deep breath and entered the room, attempting to temper his expectation. He needn't have bothered. One look and she leapt from the couch to rush into his arms. Not a minute passed before both were in tears. "I'm here, Em. I'm here," he soothed, pulling back to look her in the eye. His fingers traced the curve of her brow, grateful for the love he saw so clearly reflected in her gaze. "We'll get through this. You'll be all right. I'm here now and I'm not going anywhere." "Oh Nikolas! Nikolas, I missed you so," she cried, burying her face in his chest. He didn't care what she called him. He didn't care that she'd lost her mind. He didn't care that on a stormy night, some six months ago, her desperate heart had ripped apart at the sight of her prince having sex with his "wife" or that the pain of this betrayal had driven her to shoot them in the bed where they lay. He didn't care. All that mattered was Em. His Em. This Em. Body and soul. And Zander knew if it took every hour of every day of every year for the rest of his life, he'd succeed in stitching this torn-apart heart right back together again. He'd heal this cruelly wounded spirit, re-assemble this savagely shattered mind. He'd make her better or die trying. It wasn't a choice. It wasn't a duty. It was simply the furious bargain of his love.       EMAIL Antigone with Comments HOME To Rebel's Fanfiction Page