Disclaimer: Characters and settings are the property of ABC/Disney and the writers/producers of General Hospital. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N – I can’t seem to get this idea out of my head. So I’m putting on paper(computer screen – you know what I mean – LOL) so I can go back to writing Jarly. As soon as I post this I’ll finish up the chapter of No Turning Back I started. Let me know what you think. This is a bit of an unusual pairing.

Jen

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Common Ground

Prologue

Port Charles

Caroline Benson shivered, pulling her light weight jacket more snugly around her as the brisk wind swirled about her, leaving the air tinged with the scent of early spring and dew, and gazed out over the water faintly illuminated by the setting sun. She’d missed this when she’d moved to the city. Watching the sun setting against the water. It wasn’t the same as watching it from a sunny beach in southern Florida, but it would do. She took comfort in the soothing sound of the restless tide breaking against the impenetrable wall of cliffs on the coast of the small town known as Port Charles. Their perpetual war mirrored the internal battle she herself had been fighting in recent years. Since her mother’s death two years ago, and the subsequent discovery of her true parentage, the anger she felt because of her mother’s deception and the abandonment of the woman who had given birth to her, left her doubting, for the first time in her life, who she was. Where she came from. And most of all, where she was going.

In her entire life, she had never doubted what she wanted or who she wanted to be. And she had always been able to see the path that would best achieve her ultimate goal. She’d spent years distancing herself from the reputation her abusive alcoholic mother had earned. And found solace in the anonymity of her college education. No one there to judge her by her mother’s actions. No one to dismiss her capability of being more than the poor white trash she had been labeled as since birth. She had left that world far behind her, and vowed to never look back. She’d fought long and hard to become the most sought after interior designer on the east coast. An incredible feat for a woman of only twenty-five. But, she’d more than earned it.

Through her own blood, sweat, and tears, she’d graduated at the top of her class, both in International Finance and Interior Design, and joined one of the most prestigious firms in New York. Catering to the whims of the filthy rich, and making a name for herself in the process. And just when she had achieved her ultimate goal, her own firm, she was slapped in the face, once again, by the reality of her past. The woman that had raised her, hardly anything even remotely resembling a mother, had died. Renal failure. Years of constant drinking had only earned her an early grave, leaving Caroline with the unpleasant chore of going back to the place she had vowed never to return to, a speck of a town in coastal Florida, to deal with her meager estate and the legal aspects of her death. As cold as that sounded, after all that she had endured being Virginia’s daughter, it was more than her mother deserved from her only child.

Burying her hadn’t been difficult. To Caroline, she was nothing more than a tangible reminder of everything that she had vowed never to become. And then she was gone. Leaving her feeling strangely empty. Until the day she’d finally forced herself go through her mother’s belongings and discovered the faded documents inside a worn envelope that had shaken her to the very core of her being. Her birth certificate, with a woman’s name on it she didn’t recognize, and adoption papers. Her adoption papers.

When the shock had finally worn off, she’d called in a favor from an old friend in New York, and proceeded to find out every last detail about the life of the woman that had given birth to her. Discovering that her mother had been a prostitute had stunned her initially, but then the woman who had raised her was nothing more than an angry and bitter drunk. She’d dealt with that bit of information much easier than knowing that Bobbie Jones had adopted another child. Caroline had been left behind, unwanted, while Bobbie had embraced someone else’s child as her own. She was used to being unwanted, Virginia had reminded her of that fact often enough. But somehow, Virginia not wanting her wasn’t nearly as painful as this woman, whom she had never met, rejecting her so quickly. So easily.

So now, here she stood, on a bluff overlooking the deceptively serene harbor waters of the town the woman who had given birth to her currently resided in. And she had no idea what to do next.

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Spoon Island

Wyndemere Castle

Stefan Cassadine prided himself on his ability to distance himself from the emotional aspects of being ‘The Cassadine’. He’d spent his life, at turns, raising his son, Nikolas, and protecting his young son from the heartless and viscous woman that had given Stefan life. Helena. To say she personified evil was a mild affectation of her existence. Ruthless, cunning, and deceitful, she cared for nothing and no one, except his son. The prince. She was hell bent on ingratiating herself into his now teenage son’s life, and had been since his birth. Her intent was to mold Nikolas into a replica of her beloved Stavros. Until the day he drew his last breath, Stefan swore to himself that he would protect his son from her.

He harbored no illusions when it came to his mother’s preference to his late older brother, Stavros. He’d been dead for over a decade, and still his mother sang the praises of a man nearly as evil as the woman who had spawned him. If his mother knew the part he had played in Stavros’ untimely departure from this earth, he had no doubt that he would have faced the same fate years ago. As far as Helena was concerned, Luke Spencer was responsible for her beloved son’s death. And because of Luke’s never ending vendetta against his family, the man gladly took undeserved credit for his brother’s demise. Only Stefan and Laura knew the truth of what happened that night. And he would take it to his grave to protect Laura from Helena.

So now, he found himself in Port Charles, called to the hometown of the only woman he had ever loved, Laura Spencer, because their son’s bone marrow matched her young daughter’s and without Nikolas’ help, Lesley Lu would not survive. His emotions about the situation, at best, were volatile. The fact that Laura was pleading for his help through their son to save her child, with another man, rankled. Even when he knew why Laura couldn’t be a part of their son’s life. He, himself, had a hand in her departure from the prison, his family’s island near Greece, she had been held on by his brother. Her quiet escape in that dark night was the only reason she was still alive. He knew it had been a difficult decision for her to leave Nikolas. But that didn’t make the jealousy of her choice to stay with Spencer go away. She had hoped to be able to come back for their son later. But, Laura’s one and only attempt to contact Nikolas had resulted in her mother’s death, at Helena’s hands.

The mere thought of the pain that Nikolas would endure when forced to face his estranged mother, left him doubting, an extremely rare occurrence, his decisions. Both then and now. Should he have allowed Laura’s escape that night to go unnoticed until she was safely out of Helena’s clutches? They both knew that her life was at risk after giving birth to Nikolas. Helena had no use for her after she’d given birth to what his mother had assumed was Stavros’ son. And when the truth had finally come out much later, months later, he knew that had Laura remained with them on the island, Helena would have killed her on sight. The last living tie she had to her beloved Stavros had been severed. The child he and Laura had led Helena to believe was Stavros’ was, in fact, Stefan’s.

After receiving Laura’s frantic call for help, he had left the ultimate decision of whether or not to come here to Port Charles to his son. Part of him was proud of the compassion in the young man that had him deciding in favor of attempting to save his younger sister and ultimately facing a woman that had abandoned him when he was only months old. But the larger part of him wanted to continue to shield the young man from the pain he knew he would feel. Protect his son in a way that no one had protected him. Laura was not Helena, not even close. But Nikolas felt the pain of her abandonment all the same. If he could keep his son from facing the same unfortunate empty existence that he had, and still did, he would. Unfortunately, Cassadine men were destined to a life without love, without happiness. Because of that sad history, it made him even more determined to give Nikolas what he never had, unconditional love. The kind only a father could give. And if fate was kind, Nikolas would find a lifetime of the kind of love and happiness with a woman that he had found, ever-so briefly, with Laura. Even as he, himself, knew he could never enjoy the same fate. Laura’s loyalty was to Spencer, and he was yet again, alone.