Author: Regency

Title: The Same Place

Rating: PG-13 for one very disturbing reference to death

Characters: Tracy and Lila Q mainly, with appearances by nearly everyone.

Summary: Tracy takes a wry look at her death and finds that the afterlife doesn’t mean the end of living.

~~

This wasn’t the way Tracy Quartermaine had expected to go. No, she hadn’t envisioned a blaze of glory--she wasn’t an aficionado of guns and fire-- or a somber gathering of relatives to commemorate her passing, but this scenario took misfortune to some rather drastic proportions.

She last remembered stumbling through the jungle of one of the godforsaken Maarkham Islands in search of her runaway husband. She had been in the process of reciting a long list of grievances against the son of a bitch in question when she came upon an especially perilous log. Sharp limbs and prickly palms extended in every direction and she’d added cuts and bruises to the reaming she was going to give Luke as soon as she found him. Cursing, she’d crossed the fallen tree, and cursing, she’d tripped and fallen onto the business end of a particularly sharp branch. She didn’t scream—she couldn’t, and an unnatural hush descended over her. This was not what she’d expected.

In the aftermath of that catastrophe, Tracy was surprised to wake up to a familiar touch on her cheek. She denied what was happening even as she opened her eyes and was treated to the visage of her mother as she’d been when Tracy was still a young foolish woman. The reality felt impossible.

She reached out, fully expecting Lila to vanish right before her. It couldn’t have been her mother, but she knew this face; not another like it existed. Her cheeks were soft and radiant with vigor, her lips curved into a genteel smile. The air around her carried the light, feminine fragrance of roses that personified Lila Quartermaine. The eyes held that same sincerity. She wasn’t an illusion.

“You’re real.” Tracy was startled by the youthful ring of her voice. She touched her throat, thinking something must’ve been wrong. Wrong if surmising two-thirds of her life had gone the way of the Whig Party was to be taken as a negative sign of things to come.

Lila stroked her hair comfortingly.

“So are you.”

In an intense swell of fear, Tracy climbed from the bed and made for the nearest mirror. She was assailed with no small amount of grief as she traced her familiar reflection in the glass. It wasn’t her anymore. The last thirty years had vanished from her face. Her cheeks were smooth, almost sunken; she was slender from there down. The nightgown hung becomingly on her frame. The deep v-neckline opened to her cleavage, which wasn't substantial. Number one and number two on the list of things she was going to miss.

“What is this?” She instinctively rubbed her chest where a rather nasty hole should’ve been. It was all intact, she was all intact.

Lila stood behind her and rested her hands on her daughter’s thin shoulders.

“This is where you come to start over.”

“Heaven,” Tracy asked, disbelieving even as she said it.

Lila laughed good-naturedly. She’d had similar conversations with others over the years and that place always seemed to come up. She’d never had the heart to tell them that they’d all been tested during their lifetimes for passage to that coveted place. If they arrived here, they had failed.

“Hardly, my darling. Think of it as a second life.” She decided there were worst things. At least they were all together.

Sadly, Tracy wasn’t quite ready to abandon her previous one. She still had a great deal of love for the people she’d left behind, even those that didn’t feel the same. She shivered as if someone had stepped over her grave. It was true; she really was dead. Though she would be loathe to admit it, death wasn’t so bad. The pain was over, the worst part had passed. Considering the life she’d lived, death could come to be a blessing. Thus far, it was hardly the worst thing she'd ever endured.

Perhaps the worst of it was knowing that no one else had any idea what had happened. Not a one expected it. Her body was in the middle of nowhere and her family wasn’t likely to start looking for her until Luke made his return, if he ever did. At this rate, she thought she might be left to rot there for all eternity. Having the chance to do it all another time didn't lessen the loneliness of having been no one's concern on the first turn.

It was beyond the reach of her fingers to manipulate and was, therefore, beyond her control. Hindsight was for the living of which she was no longer one. So, under Lila’s careful tutelage, she began again.

The life she founded was eerily similar to that which she’d been forced to abandon with a few stark contrasts. She lived in a quaint little port city and was the daughter of a wealthy family. She was the Chief Executive Officer of ELQ once more and not one of her relatives contested her ability to do the job well. If that wasn't disorienting enough, the family she had cohabitated with for so long, the Quartermaines consisted only of Lila, Tracy herself, AJ, Jason--Q, not Morgan-- and a thus unnamed young girl affectionately called Sweetheart. Everyone else was, dared she voice it, alive. Tracy found that the phrase largely lost its meaning as she mingled with Port Charles’ long-deceased citizens.

Every person existed with a purpose and everyone found someone to count on. Adella Corinthos paid wordless penitence caring for her sons’ never-born children. Few people blamed her for Ric and Sonny anymore. They had chosen who they would be long after her death. It didn’t hurt that Lily Corinthos was there to help.

Luis Alcazar had begged Kristina Davis’s forgiveness and began to court her. They’d been living together for a year and a half. Love apparently transcended a heartbeat, and vengeance. If only the message crossed a flat line, maybe their surviving siblings would be able to find a similar peace.

As Tracy built a respectable existence for herself in the mortal negative of the place she’d called home, she began to find it increasingly difficult to peek in on those she still held so dear. That life had grown so far away and was becoming harder to miss by the day.

Two months passed before Luke returned from the other side of the middle of nowhere, and another passed before even Dillon became concerned of her whereabouts. Making use every advantage at their disposal, they searched for her. Weeks passed as federal agents and private eyes went looking for the missing Quartermaine heiress. After a hundred days with no leads, they considered that she might have simply left town on her own. Her eldest son, the one she thought knew her least, said she wouldn’t have and they believed him. The hunt continued, with a desperate fervor at its heart.

Five months after her death, a guided jungle tour stumbled, horrified, upon her well-dressed remains. Looking on, she’d winced in sympathy. There wasn’t much left. She had developed a special kind of contempt for the local pumas regarding that.

Three separate tests were conducted to confirm her identity before her family would accept it. They refused to believe she was that easily lost to them and for that long before they’d known. When the news was delivered, by Robert no less, she'd turned away. The loss in Dillon’s eyes was more than she could stand and she'd fled the sight of it for a drink.

Her memorial service was quaint and brief; all feeling the less said the better. The multitude of tears shed, by these people, on her behalf was stunning. They had hardly ever treated her with more than a passing contempt, and yet, they cried.

Brooklyn had watched her sealed casket with a teary-eyed fascination, hoping aloud that it was an unfunny joke being played on her entire family. She wasn’t sure why she was so miserable at the passing of a woman she knew little to nothing about, but she was. She thought maybe it was because now she’d never have the chance to learn anything at all. She had the sinking feeling she’d never hear her grandmother’s name spoken aloud again.

Across the aisle, Dillon clung to Georgie throughout the service, often squeezing his eyes shut to hold back reality. The tears that managed to slide past his perseverance were particularly bitter. He felt the emptiness of where his mother had been and wished for the awkwardness that used to persist whenever they spoke. He’d take the long pauses and the dramatic eye rolling if it meant having her. They were best friends once, he recalled; he ached to go back there, to the movies, the scheming, and the hotel rooms so small she’d fall asleep on his shoulder.

Luke sat tight-lipped and pale, and blamed himself. He thought of the ring she’d worn. It was still there. Robert had given it to him after identifying Tracy’s body, proof positive of the worst. After much novel contemplation, he’d returned it. In his eyes, its place was on her finger. It was by far the greatest thing he’d given her in their time together and it was his hope that it meant more than the misery had.

Lulu cried inexplicably at his side and carried a torch of blame for him, too. She'd been horrid to the Step-Witch, but she'd also found a lot of who she was to become inside of her. Seeing herself so keenly in the eyes of someone she despised was more than her young mind would accept, and it had rebelled--she had rebelled. Strangely, what she’d miss most was the kinship. Now, there'd be no one else to feel abandoned when her father disappeared without so much as a goodbye. She was back at the start--little Lulu, lonely and misunderstood. If her father had been considerate for once in his life, she thought maybe she wouldn't have to feel this way.

Alan and Monica supported each other mightily and subscribed to their own brand on accountability. If they’d kicked Luke to the curb in the beginning, this all could’ve been avoided. Alan remembered his sister being young and precocious in place of middle-aged and conniving, and discovered that he loved her no less at the end of her life than he had when she first arrived. The clever adolescent he knew so well wasn’t visible in the eyes on the memorial photograph. She was lovely, yes, but it wasn’t the Tracy he wanted her remembered as; it wasn’t his baby sister. He berated himself and wished he’d chosen a different picture.

Edward blinked stoically and hoped, for her sake, that she had seen Lila. He felt a tightening in his chest as he, Alan, Luke, Robert, Ned, and Dillon rose to carry out of her casket. It was hardly a burden, it was so light. He showed an indifferent face to the public, but later that night, he drank himself into oblivion not to mourn for her. Kind or disgraceful, she had been his little girl, created in his image. He didn’t look at his reflection for days after he committed her to the ground.

~~~

As she went about her day, Tracy spied BJ Jones sprinting the halls of General Hospital. She rolled her eyes before catching sight of a Corinthos offspring following close behind. She discreetly tripped up the child and felt little guilt over it.

Sweetheart, who had been watching from a distance -- as always--gave her a stern look and walked away. Once again, Tracy failed to live up to her. She sighed; she could only try. That little girl was the only one to take issue with Tracy constantly since she'd made her appearance in the Q mansion some time ago. Every single time she stepped even an inch out of line, there was that face and those stern, stern eyes. They took root in whatever wounds they caused and didn't cease to sting when she stalked away. Tracy thought she must've been Daddy's daughter from another of his affairs. Nonetheless, she thought of her child when the little girl laughed, however rare an occasion it was. And, on the canvas of her mind, there was always the portrait of a regretful smile.

~~~

It was a warm evening after dinner when Tracy asked, “Mother, why didn’t you go to heaven?” It was probably an absurd question, but this place they were in was absurd, too. It was worth posing at its source.

Lila thoughtfully swished her ice tea. She could never be found with another drink in hand unless there was call to celebrate. Only then could she be caught sipping a glass of champagne and she was never tipsy.

“I didn’t belong there.” She caught a drop of water off the sweating glass and rubbed it between her fingers.

“Why not?” Tracy watched her mother's elegant fidgeting and tried to connect the image with hands that hadn't shifted under pressure when she was a child.

“Because I am not without sin and some of my biggest are those that God cannot forgive.”

Tracy frowned in confusion and set down her red wine. She was one to drink when she felt like it and sometimes when she didn't it. Admittedly the compulsion wasn't as strong as it used to be.

“I don’t understand.”

Lila took Tracy’s hand in a familiar gesture of affection her daughter was still acclimating herself to.

“Because my greatest sin was against Alan and against you. I should’ve been a better mother and defended you against your father. I didn’t.”

Tracy immediately began to rationalize. In her memory, Lila Quartermaine could do no wrong. Her love had been genuine and ran as deeply as the Mediterranean Sea. It had sustained Tracy her entire life. Now that it was over, she didn't want to let it go.

“You couldn’t have, Mother. Daddy controlled--still controls--everything.”

“Darling, I wasn’t completely dependent on him. I had the money to take you and Alan away from his cruelty. I could’ve taken you home to Europe. You would’ve loved it.” To think the life a young Lila had dreamt of and attained had become hell the first time her husband called her daughter a burden and she’d stood calmly by and let it be.

“I do love Europe.” She sounded feeble and young, and she felt the same. Bits and pieces of the only saint she prayed to were falling away.

“I know. I must’ve filled your head with such fairy tales growing up. It’s no wonder you showed a passion for foreign lands.”

She clung to her mother’s strong, delicate hands.

“I loved the fairy tales. They were the best dreams to never come to life.” She'd inhaled the books like oxygen and had built her ideal future around them. She was happy in her La La Land for a long time before it had dissolved in her juvenile hands and she realized she would have to be her own White Knight. In those dreams, she'd never been practical.

Lila implored her only daughter with her greatest weapons, her eyes. She hadn’t a clue that Tracy had always envied them and wanted their innate tenderness for herself.

“They can now. You can try again. Your father isn’t here to stand in your way and if he was, I would stop him. You can be the woman you were meant to be, no detours.”

“I don’t know if I can.” She hadn’t conquered the world in sixty years and she was exhausted for having tried and failed.

Lila smiled, warmly exuding the love that existed at the center of things. She used to wish she'd endowed Tracy with more of herself before she’d departed the Earth. She was convinced, utterly convinced, that she’d willed her stubborn daughter nothing with which to improve herself. She observed her now and saw that she was wrong. That slight waffling, the covert humility in her eyes was all Lila. Edward hadn't a bashful bone in his body and he'd never told their baby she'd made him proud. To this day, Tracy didn't know, but her mother did.

“You can.”

Tracy cleared her throat and looked down at their joined hands. She wished she shared the same confidence.

“Where do I start?”

Her mother tipped her head towards the French doors leading to the drawing room. A golden blond head peeked shyly around the doorframe.

“Start with Sweetheart. Your daughter needs a name.”

“My daughter,” she covered her mouth as it became clear as crystal. The girl had been her continuous shadow, appearing and disappearing wherever Tracy might be. She wore a mask of expectation and, more often than not, Tracy exhibited behavior that would cause it to fall. The daughter looked to her mother for guidance and found only examples of what not to be.

“The daughter you used to see in every little girl you’d meet.”

“Sweetheart?” She'd been so frail in her dreams, breakable at Tracy's touch, and she hadn't had the strength to face a child she couldn't hold or even guard against herself.

The normally poised child revealed herself fully, and with a look of willful determination. Exemplifying in every way, the blood that rushed through her.

“Mama.”

That word repaired all the hurt she’d experienced since that day in the European Women’s Clinic. She put out her arms--a gesture so instinctive and elementary that Tracy had no time to fear rejection. Her daughter ran into them and held on for dear life. There was never a chance of her turning away.

“Don’t let go,” she whispered, her breath warm against her mother’s neck.

“Never,” Tracy promised in return. It wasn't a vow to be made lightly and tarnishing it was the last thing she'd ever intentionally do.

Dark clouds blew in over Tracy’s Port Charles. The wind grew cold and fierce over their heads. Lila looked up knowingly. Her daughter and granddaughter clung to each other. Sweetheart felt it and shivered in Tracy’s embrace. There was lightning.

“Mama, what’s happening?”

Tracy had no idea, but Lila did.

“Something somewhere familiar is changing.”

~~~