Halloween was not one of Alexis' favorite days. In fact, she'd always hated it. She'd endured enough spooks and goblins growing up a Cassadine to sustain her a lifetime, and the last two years of her life had given her enough terror and fright to make up for another.

The night matched her mood. It was drizzling... not really rain, but that hideous mist that's just enough to make you wet and uncomfortable but not enough to just drench you and get it over with. It was her least favorite kind of weather on one of her least favorite nights of the year... par for the course of being Alexis Davis lately.

Sighing, she carefully folded the brightly colored costume her beautiful daughter had worn earlier that evening. The irony of dressing her little angel as a baby devil had been too rich to pass up... especially given what people thought about Kristina's real father. That no one else was in on the joke only made it more enjoyable to Alexis. Everyone had cooed over the 11-month-old, commented on the bright red coverall with the little black horns and wings attached. Alexis hadn't exactly gotten the wings... but she figured the designer was working from a direct opposite idea... angel/devil, etc. It was too damn cute to nitpick over, and she intended to save it so Kristina could see it one day.

The small party at the hospital had been enjoyable. It was her first real celebration with her daughter, except for the few brief hours that she'd had alone with Kristina to mark her own birthday's passing. Cameron had, mercifully, stayed on the periphery tonight, letting mother and daughter play and participate in all the activities without his interference. Then his pager had gone off, and he'd informed Alexis there was an emergency at Ferncliffe he had to report and take care of. For the happy mother, the words had been devastating, because it meant not only the end of the party but that Cameron would most likely rip Kristina out of her arms and take her to daycare rather than let Alexis simply take her home and spend some time with her baby.

"Can't you, please, just trust me? I have her with me... I don't need to run anymore. You want me to trust you... It's time for that to work both ways, isn't it?"

She wasn't sure what about her honest, heart-felt plea had reached him, but Cameron relented. Alexis wrapped Kristina up in her blanket to protect her from the weather and headed out to the car, loaded her daughter in, and their roommate had driven them home. Alexis had been about to head upstairs when she saw that Cameron was having second thoughts. She'd sighed heavily, and turned to face him from her seat.

"I can ask someone to come over if it will make you feel better. I know Gia's studying... she can do it here just as well as she can at the law library."

The suggestion had suited Cameron, and Gia was due any minute. Kristina had been half asleep when they reached the apartment, and Alexis had eased her out of her costume and into pajamas before laying the little girl down in her bed. Alexis wasn't sure she'd ever get tired of that... of seeing Kristina asleep in her own bed in her own home. It had taken so much to get her there.

The treasured first Halloween costume safely tucked away, Alexis headed out to start some popcorn in the microwave. Gia's one stipulation had been that Alexis let her make the coffee upon arrival, so bypassing the coffeemaker, she reached into the cabinet and pulled down a packet of her favorite treat and popped in to cook. The steaming package was ready in minutes, and Alexis dumped the contents into a large bowl and walked out to the living room just in time to hear Gia's soft knock at the door.

"Hi there," she said as the beautiful young woman stepped through the entry. "Thanks for coming over."

"Are you kidding?" Gia said, setting her books on the desk, then pulling off her coat. "I get a captive, brilliant legal mind to pick in order to help me study for this test... it was a no brainer."

"Considering the run I've had, I'm not sure some people would agree with your assessment."

Shrugging, Gia shook her head. "Some people are idiots. Besides, it's not like I had a lot of other plans tonight."

"You could be at the Halloween ball," Alexis observed. She saw a look of sad resignation pass over Gia's face as she took the coat from her hands and hung it up in the closet.

"Why bother? The only person I'd want to see there will be busy having his heart ripped out... and I've seen that enough."

Alexis knew the feeling all too well. She remembered all the times she had born witness to Carly's efforts to hurt Sonny. It had torn her up to see it, but as she had learned the hard way, you can't tell a man who thinks he's in love anything about how wrong he is to waste himself on the woman. Zander, who Alexis knew was the person Gia was speaking of, would have to learn that the hard way. Sonny, it seemed, never would.

"Well, per your instructions, the coffeemaker awaits. And I made a fresh batch of popcorn."

Gia's smile beamed. "Great. I'll get the coffee started, and be right back. Oh, and if Kristina wakes up, I get to see her, right?"

Alexis chuckled. Since Kristina had moved back home, Gia had made it a point to find lots of reasons to stop by. Considering how she'd felt about the younger woman during her relationship with Nikolas--unaffected at best, annoyed at worst--it amazed Alexis that it was Gia who seemed to be the only female friend she had left. She wished somehow she could make Zander see what he was missing out on by fighting a losing battle for Emily and letting Gia go. She made a mental note to at least try and broach the subject of his "friendship" with Gia soon.

Coffee made and textbooks open, the attorney-at-law and the attorney-to-be sat down and began to go over some of the fine points Gia was having trouble with. Two hours later, they took a break, made fresh coffee, and pushed the books aside to sit back on the couch and relax and catch up.

"So did Kristina enjoy the party?" Gia asked. Alexis' dimples were answer enough, but the verbal response soon followed.

"She was the life of the party. And I'll have you know, she is a genius. She kept throwing back the pieces of candy that weren't made from dark chocolate. Of course, I'll be eating them all... but she had fun collecting them."

The two shared a warm laugh, and Alexis sipped at the steaming brew in her cup before making one further observation.

"You know, it was odd, though. For a hospital function, the usual suspects were definitely missing in action. I mean, no Tony, no Bobbie... Amy wasn't there terrorizing people with gossip. It seemed odd."

"Well, I don't know about Amy, but I'm sure Tony and Bobbie were too busy with Carly."

Gia's words struck a nerve for Alexis immediately. "What do you mean, with Carly?"

"Well, she's in the hospital... intensive care. I figured you must have heard by now."

"No," Alexis said, sitting up and resting her cup on the table. "No, I hadn't heard. Was there a problem with the baby?"

Stunned, Gia shook her head. "Alexis, this is all over the papers and on the news. How did you not hear about this?"

"Me or someone I'm related to has been on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story on the evening news for months. I don't bother to pick up one or turn on the other anymore." Alexis ignored the defeated sound in her own voice. "What happened?"

"Well," Gia began, "um, Carly had the baby, and he's fine, but, um... Alexis, there was... well, Sonny thought Lorenzo Alcazar was trying to hurt Carly, I guess, and he shot Lorenzo, but the bullet... it--it also hit Carly."

"Oh, my God." Alexis felt her jaw drop as what Gia was telling her sank in. "Well, is she okay?"

"No, she's not." Gia delivered the information matter-of-factly. She wasn't sure how else to do it. "She was shot in the head. She's, um, she's in a coma. I hear that Scott had Sonny arrested, but he was released, though knowing Scott, I'm sure it's not over."

A wave of dizziness followed quickly by a feeling of sickness hit Alexis, and she grabbed onto the arm of the couch with one hand for support. Sonny had shot his wife... Sonny had shot Carly... and now she was hovering between life and death... because of him.

"Gia, I, um, I need to check on Kristina."

She knew it was an excuse, but Gia shook her head anyway and assured Alexis she had plenty of reading to do, which she did. It was clear that hearing about what had happened was throwing Alexis for a loop, and though Gia was curious to know why it was having such an impact, she held her questions.

Alexis rose from the couch on shaky legs and barely heard whatever Gia had said in response to her statement. Moving as quickly as her stunned body would let her, she walked to the hallway, passing by her daughter's nursery and went straight to her own room, where she quickly shut the door. Her whole body was trembling and she felt barely able to stand by the time she got to the bed and collapsed down on it.

How in God's name had this happened? How had he let this happen? When was it going to be enough? She wanted to scream, rail, throw something at the heavens and hope it would land a blow, but Alexis knew how futile all her rantings would be. Instead, she curled up onto her side and gave quiet voice to her thoughts as she muffled her anguish with a pillow.

"I did what I was supposed to do... I left... I walked away for him, I walked further away for Kristina... it was all supposed to be okay. How could you let this happen? How could you keep letting all of us hurt so damn much? Doesn't someone in this godforsaken mess deserve to be happy? Couldn't you just let him have his baby? Couldn't you just let him be happy?"

Tears followed the words, soaking the fine linen pillowcase and the down-stuffed filling beneath. Alexis didn't care. She was too tired to care. All her life she had lived terrified of wanting too much, needing too much for fear of the cost. And then she had done both... wanted and needed, and she had given in to her love for Sonny, and the punishment for that, for taking what she wanted, it was never, never going to end. She had suffered, her sister had died, her daughter had almost lost her life and then been ripped for her arms... she'd had to kill to defend her own life... and now just when she thought finally the cycle of penalty and retribution would end, the hand that doled it out had smashed down upon Sonny and torn away the one thing she had wished for him despite everything.

It had been hard, knowing that he would be having a baby with Carly, that another woman would get to share all the moments with him that her own choice had meant Alexis would never have. It made her so sad to think that she'd thought Ned deserving to be there during her sonogram on that precious day when she'd found out she was having her wished for little girl. She'd known then it should have been Sonny, but her fear had been unrelenting in those days. Now her grief felt just as powerful.

'He's fine,' Gia had said. A boy... Sonny Corinthos had a son. But instead of holding his boy and prancing around, passing out cigars, Alexis knew what Sonny was doing. He was bathing in his guilt... he was drowning in it, beating himself up over and over with all the ways he had failed. She had no doubt of it... and more than likely, he was holed up somewhere, begging God for forgiveness and for another chance.

Most people would think she was insane for feeling so deeply for him. She could hear them all--Ned, Jax, Cameron, Nikolas, probably even Zander--telling her that after everything that Sonny Corinthos had done to her, she was truly off her rocker if she thought that he deserved her sympathy. But they didn't understand. They didn't realize how many often she'd comforted herself in times of doubt by saying 'someday, Carly will give him a child.' As much as she despised the three-time Mrs. Corinthos, Alexis wanted Sonny to have the child he'd always wanted so much. Which, of course, was totally contrary to her decision to keep Kristina away from him. She knew it made no sense if you said it out loud or wrote it out and read it, but in her heart it made sense. Carly was willing to take those chances... she was not. Kristina was more important to her than anything... even Sonny. It was her one and only justification, and she couldn't let it go.

Rising, Alexis went into the bathroom and washed her face. She had no clue how long she'd left Gia alone, but she knew it was too long to be polite, and so she made her way back to the living room. Apparently, she needn't have worried... Gia had fallen asleep under a stack of her notes on the comfortable couch.

The mother instinct in her too strong to ignore, she walked over and quietly gathered up the notes before she pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa and spread it over her guest. Gia snuggled into the soft chenille and drifted even deeper into her dreams. Alexis then went into the kitchen and turned off the coffee pot, checked the door locks, and then, finally, she walked into Kristina's nursery.

Reaching down, she scooped her little one into her arms and headed back to her own room. With the expert precision that had come to her quickly since Kristina's homecoming, Alexis arranged her pillows into a protective cocoon and laid Kristina down in the center of it. The baby stretched, arching her back slightly, then nestled down, her eyes never opening.

"I just need you close tonight, sweetheart," she whispered as she laid down on the bed herself, her body on its side so that one hand was free to make lazy, gentle circles on Kristina's tummy. "I heard some news tonight. You have a little brother, and I'll bet he's almost as beautiful as you are."

Tears stung at Alexis' eyes again as she thought about the little boy and about the man who had wanted him so desperately. "Your daddy's having such a hard time, Kristina. He did something... something I know he wishes he could take back, but he can't... and now he might lose someone he loves very much. And I wish we could do something to make it better for him. Because I know that he didn't want to be the man he is right now... a man who'd make that mistake... but that's who he is.

"But mama wishes so much that she'd been wrong, sweetheart. I wish that I'd been wrong and that years from now people would say, 'how could you have ever thought something could happen to Kristina?' I know it sounds crazy, but mama wanted to be wrong, because... because I can't stop wanting your daddy to be okay. I can't not want him to be happy and to have the things he wants. And I was willing to have been this, terrible, horrible person who kept you from him unfairly because then you'd have still been safe and he'd have been happy, and it would have been okay. But now it's not okay..."

Alexis relaxed down, her cheek pressing into one of the pillows so that her face was closer to Kristina's. As she had done countless times, she studied her daughter's face...retracing the mental steps she had taken in memorizing the exact shape of her eyes, the contour of her nose, the number of amazingly long lashes that lay pressed together in sleep. She was a masterpiece, this child that had come from that night of passion and love and surrender. And while she watched the baby girl's little lips move as her dreams prompted them to, as she took note of the rhythmic rise and fall of Kristina's chest, Alexis let her thoughts drift back to the one simple truth that was paramount in her life.

It was all worth it. Every moment of torment and loss and grief and persecution that she had endured since the night Kristina's life began had been worth this child's chance to exist and be in the world. She had said often that everything she'd done had been for Kristina... but the truth was even deeper than that. Nothing she had been through... not even the loss of her sister... would make her undo that miraculous night if someone offered to take away all the pain that had followed in exchange for her daughter. She would do it all again... she would do it 100 times if need be if it meant that Kristina was still here, in this bed, on this wretched Halloween night.

And she knew, sadly, that that meant she would again lie to Sonny, again hide this precious little miracle from him in an effort to keep her safe from the nightmare that Sonny and his family were living now. Because no matter how much she had hoped to be wrong... reality had taken that hope away once again. It didn't matter if the enemy was a rival mobster, a jealous man, a vengeful relative or himself... Sonny's world was a world built for tragedy, not happiness. And it was a world that Alexis would die fighting to protect her daughter from being victimized by.

Alexis stood and walked to her bureau and opened her jewelry box. She picked up the cool, shiny steel key that lay inside, then she walked back to her bed and pulled the metallic box it opened out from underneath. Once the lock was turned and the lid opened, her fingers folded around the letter which lay on top of the stack of personal papers and important documents that were held within the fire safe box. Setting the envelope aside, Alexis then secured the case and returned it and its key to their usual places. That left her only one task, and she bent down, picking up the letter, then walked into the bathroom, her eyes darting back quickly to check that Kristina was still safely positioned on the bed.

The matches sat in the medicine cabinet... too high for Kristina's reach, but still convenient enough for Alexis to light her vanilla candles for bath time. She pulled them down now, striking one, and holding it to first one corner of the envelope, then another. The paper caught quickly, and she let it drop from her fingers into the basin as the words that had been held within disappeared and crumbled into ash.

She had written this same letter three times. Once she had written it, thrown it into the fire and a partial remnant had led her sister to her death. The second time, she had written the letter in the hopes that Sonny would read the truth and help her fight for their daughter, but when she'd gone to give it to him, to try and find a way inside of the wall he'd built between them, there had been no way to get close. She knew she could have left the letter behind, but his indifference had made her afraid to let him know, and so that set of pages, too, had been destroyed in her office shredder.

This draft had been written on the night of Stefan's funeral. Something akin to hopelessness had settled on Alexis that night, probably due to her encounter with Helena, and all of Alexis' fears about being cast away by those she loved... by this person she loved most in the world... had taken hold of her. Would Kristina some day hate her for what she'd done? Would she revile her for taking away her father or would she understand that Alexis had only been trying to protect her from what Michael was going through now... or worse?

The guilt had done her in... and she had written the letter. Her plan had been to have it delivered on Kristina's first birthday. The new baby would have been here by then, she'd expected, and Sonny would be happy... and hopefully, finding out he had a daughter would only increase his joy, even if it meant Alexis would have to face his wrath, which she knew she no doubt would.

But as the flames sizzled and engulfed the rest of the expensive stationary, Alexis knew that it would not be this birthday Sonny shared with his daughter if he was ever to do so. It was just still too dangerous... and she would not risk Kristina... not even for him. Once the declaration was nothing but charred bits, Alexis ran the tap and watched as it all went down the drain.

Walking back into the bedroom, Alexis shivered and climbed into bed, moving Kristina so that the baby was snuggled against her chest. As she had so many other times before, she wondered if her last chance to tell the truth had passed her by, or if something would change someday in order for her to give father and daughter to one another without her having to fear for Kristina's well-being.

"I won't give up hope, little one." Alexis' whispered promise was barely audible, the wors disappearing as she touched her lips to the top of her baby's head. "I won't ever give up hope that someday you and he can be together. But not now, my angel. Not now."

Kristina's body curled up as if she were about to start crying, her muscles tense, her hands balling into fists. Alexis cooed to her quietly, whispering of her love. The words took away whatever upset had been plaguing the little girl, and she relaxed back into a comfortable sleep, her ear pressed to her mother's chest where the heart that loved her beyond measure beat in a soothing rhythm.

"Not now," Alexis thought to herself... "but hopefully, someday."

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