|
This is a Sexis companion piece to a Jaxis story I wrote called "Running Away and Coming Home," though reading that
one is not required.
One thing Sonny had come to know through life experience was that life was a lot of days woven together in between big
moments. He'd had lots of those moments in his time, most of them bad ones. But every now and then a really good one crept
in that changed things for the better. Even if it didn't last, and in his world, it usually didn't, they were the brief snippets
of seconds or minutes that kept Sonny going through all the trials in his life.
Finding out about Lily's pregnancy had been a bad moment at first, but when he had embraced the idea of the child, of
his child, he had found his heart filled with joy and pride. He was going to be a father. The elation had been short-lived
and the resulting grief devastating, but Sonny had never regretted those few hours when he dreamed of his son and their future
together.
The second time he had learned he would be a father, Sonny's reaction hadn't been much better initially. The mother was
hardly someone he would have chosen at that point. Hell, he could barely stand Carly when she got pregnant. But he had taken
responsibility for his new son and had once more let himself plan a future as a father.
Again he was left with broken dreams and heartache -- but also with gratitude for the precious visions of his child that
his imagination had given him.
There were other moments, of course, times Sonny had laughed, times he had truly smiled from his heart and not just for
show, times when he had known true warmth and kindness and love. But he didn't think about those times often because those
memories now brought out a well of pain as deep as the ones he felt over his sons. Sonny's sense of loss over the woman who
had given him all of those gifts was too intense for him to face. It was easier to pretend that she had never mattered.
He had never expected anything important to happen that day when he walked into the hospital. He was simply there to
drop off a check to Alan Quartermaine to cover some new equipment the Stone Cates Memorial Aids Wing needed and didn't have
the funds to cover. Sonny had stepped into the lobby fully expecting to be there no more than a minute and be on his way...
But then he saw them, and his world tilted upon one of those moments.
Sonny knew what had caught his attention. Her hair. The last few times he had seen Alexis, her hair had been pulled
back carelessly, but today it was shining and hanging loose and it looked beautiful. Then he saw the smile on her face, the
glow in her skin, the absolute sense of contentment that seemed to radiate off of her.
She was beautiful, and the lie Sonny told himself every day, the one that said Alexis never mattered to him, collapsed
under the weight of the truth of how much he missed her and how much he wanted her back.
It took him a few seconds to move his eyes from her to the small bundle in her arms. Sonny felt the corners of his mouth
curve upwards as he realized that Alexis was holding her daughter. The last time he had seen little Kristina she had been
fighting for her life...now she was grinning a wide, toothless grin as she reached up toward Alexis' fingers, which the happy
mother was waving just out of reach.
"Can you get them? Can you reach them? I bet you can. You can do anything, can't you? You are my miracle, little
one."
It had been so long since he heard her voice spoken free of pain or regret or grief or anger. To Sonny it was like music
-- the music that he had once danced to and enjoyed so much. Their fights, their banter, the quiet talks about the secrets
they could tell no one else ...it had all been a slow, sultry series of steps that led to a night Sonny knew would haunt him
with memories of its beauty to his dying day.
He still wasn't sure what it was that made the gears click in his head. Sonny couldn't pinpoint anything in the way Alexis
was holding her or the way the baby looked that really made him stop and think about the fact that it had been nine months
since that night...two months since Kristina's birth in Alexis' seventh month of pregnancy...
Sonny knew what the DNA results had supposedly confirmed. He knew what Ned had claimed. He knew what Alexis had said.
It could all just be wishful thinking...it could just be his heart wanting what it had wanted that first day when he'd learned
she was pregnant and again on the day Carly had revealed "the truth" about Alexis carrying his child...
It could just be his soul wanting what it could not have.
But then Alexis looked up at him and her eyes locked with his.
She had been caught unawares, and the lie wasn't in her eyes. Instead he saw a flash of surprise followed by a glimpse
of panic. And then he saw her waiting...waiting for him to do or say whatever it was she had feared he would do or say the
day he realized the truth.
Kristina was his.
Sonny felt his body freeze into place. He couldn't lift a hand, take a step, nothing...he could only stand there, his
eyes holding her gaze as if for dear life. His -- Kristina was his child, and Alexis...she had kept her away, she had stolen
time with his daughter, she had...
No, he thought, she kept your daughter alive. Sonny remembered the sight of Alexis in that hospital room, the way she
stood over Kristina willing her to live. His mind clamped down on the dangerous and angry thoughts it wanted to jump to automatically
and instead focused on the one thing he needed to remember most of all.
'You have a daughter because Alexis wouldn't let her go. You have a child because Alexis fought for her with everything
she has.'
It took every ounce of strength Sonny had inside of him to turn and walk away, but some sense of reason that he didn't
even know he had told him to do it and do it now. He could not attack her. He could not threaten her. He couldn't demand
or yell or accuse. Alexis had pulled away from him because of her fear of him, and now he had to find a way to do the impossible.
He had to prove her wrong.
Sonny knew he couldn't change who he was...the mob was a part of him, his life was what he had made it, and his anger
had fueled him through his entire existence. But he could change how she saw him. He could fight his nature to rush off
and hire a lawyer or force an ugly confrontation.
No, instead Sonny would do what Alexis had tried so hard to teach him -- he would wait.
From that day on, Johnny became his eyes and ears, his quiet and non-intrusive guarding providing a layer of protection
to his new family and a conduit of information to Sonny.
That's how Sonny always knew when Kristina had check ups with her team of specialists with impressive sounding titles.
How he always seemed to be in the hospital on those days. It was the reason he had decided to go to Kelly's for lunch two
weeks ago when Alexis had taken Kristina out on the town for the first time.
Anywhere his daughter and her mother went, Sonny followed. He watched, he smiled, he waited.
And he knew that someday, Alexis would see that he had shown her the respect and consideration he should have shown her
that day in her apartment and that day in her hospital room in GH.
And she would forgive. And she would stop watching him as if he might spring at her and snatch Kristina away and would
instead extend her hand and ask him to join them.
It was coming. It was the moment he lived for.
|
