Author: Regency

Title: Free

Characters: Laura, Scotty, Luke

Rating: G

Summary: Laura had two choices, have her life or have her heart.

Author’s Notes: LuNacy fans, like you’re actually reading this, still love ‘em, can’t finish one of their stories to save my life! Anyway, they can’t all be golden.

Disclaimer: I own no one and make no money to match what I don’t own.

~~

When she was in his arms, she felt alive. She felt like everything stolen had been returned and she was still the golden-haired girl that everyone had wronged.

Then, the pictures came. They came in slow succession, filling her vision for moments, taunting her with things that weren’t and would never be again. She was in a time machine, catapulting through her life at speeds unimaginable. She was two places at once and she stumbled in their dance.

He looked at her with concern in his tamed eyes. She felt the madness clawing at her consciousness, threatening, threatening to drag her into the dark for one last time and she couldn’t take it. Angry and terrified, she backed out of his loving embrace and began to walk away.

The words, the lies filled her head as she headed in the opposite direction of her future: to her past. He called her name but she didn’t answer. The madness that called was as much her making as against her will.

He followed her, heedless of the others who had stopped to watch her fall and break again.

She forewent the elevator and made for the stairs. Not two steps behind, he followed. He was afraid of the expressionless blue of her eyes. He wanted his Laura back. Damn it, they’d only had this long.

She took the stairs as quickly as her legs would carry her, her skirt clutched in her fingers to save her from tripping. The cement flashed in her head but was of little importance to her. He continued to follow, growing exhausted faster than she was but not stopping.

Before they reached the ground floor, they were both glistening in failing light. She found the emergency exit first and slipped away into the night, leaving him to try following the path of nothing at all she’d left behind.

He retrieved his car and called her boys. They’d all be looking for her. He didn’t see her watching from a nook between the buildings and waiting for just her moment.

She ran in his stead, fleeing to the one place where she could be exactly what they expected.

He searched desperately for another hour before someone finally relayed the call to him. When he hung up his cell phone, he broke eleven traffic laws to reach her.

Laura Webber Baldwin Spencer sat in her rocking chair in her evening gown, staring out the open window. She didn’t rock or move, just let the terrible moments and memories flow over her until they were all there was.

The door opened slowly behind her and she felt the eyes of her first love. She smiled but refused his call. No, this was her battle to fight, her demons to exorcise. He’d have to wait his turn.

“Sweetheart?” Always sweetheart, never angel.

He walked slowly towards her and touched her shoulders. “Laura, can you hear me?”

She blinked at the wall and remained silent. She felt the agony within him but couldn’t find the strength to make it stop. Aching for him, she waited for him to leave her, the way he always would.

Quietly, he departed the tiny rectangular cell and she was alone.

However, even that didn’t last. Soon she felt the presence that would haunt the rest of her days, whatever their number.

“Angel?” he tested, unsure exactly what he was walking into, but knowing that he was the only one who could help if anyone could.

She didn’t answer, but he knew she wouldn’t. He rounded her chair and kneeled in front of her. Cradling her hands in his, he pleaded for her.

“Forget everything that’s happened. Come back to me one more time, honey.”

Laura didn’t have that option. There was no going back. He’d made decisions and so had she. This was something that was done forever. She couldn’t come back to him. In response, she turned away, blank eyes searching aimlessly for nothing.

“Did I do this to you again?” He choked. “Did I break you by not loving you?”

“Not for this,” she conceded. “I am alive because I loved you, but I don’t have to love you to live.” She rubbed his cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m doing you the greatest favor I can. I am freeing you.”

“Not at cost to yourself.”

“At any cost.” The madness, a person in its own right, knocked for Laura to tend to it. It was waiting specter-like in the dark corners of her mind. “You have a new life, with Tracy Quartermaine. I see it in your eyes. You’re at your best with her--it’s been years since you felt that way with me.”

He touched her face, beyond vocal pleading. What else could he say when he saw that her mind was made up?

“Leave me. Do that if you ever loved me at all, if any of that love remains.”

“You know it does.”

She came as close to a confession as she would when tears fell down his cheek. She hated this betrayal, this half-truth. Letting go had always been the hardest thing to do. “Then, leave me. Let me go knowing that you’re not bound to me anymore.”

He was losing control. “I will always be bound to you. You were--you are my heart. I can’t let you go.”

She kissed his hand and held it to her cheek. “You will, in time. Give yourself to your wi--to Tracy and you will find more peace in that union than you can find in what’s left of ours.”

He was so warm, so close. She could’ve given up her future to be in his arms just one more time. It would’ve been so easy.

“I love you, Laura Webber. And I always will.” He planted a gentle kiss on her lips, the same one that had always taken her breath away. Twenty-seven years, God save her, and she hadn’t forgotten a single moment like this. She hoped she never would.

“And I love you, always. Now, go. I don’t want you to see me like this again.” There came the demons, slyly beckoning.

He was willing to honor her wish. Slowly, he began to leave her. One step became another and another until their grip on each other was loose and precarious. He had to release her now; she had to release him. Their hands slipped apart along with a lifetime of the most precious heartache and devotion she thought she would ever know. In a terrific blur, he was gone.

The click-clack of his dress shoes just faded away, taking along with it the clawing madness, and the memories that had threatened. His absence was the cure, something she’d been told some time ago.

Your heart or your mind, Helena had tempted. In a rocking chair, in a tiny room with no one but herself to blame, it seemed she had already chosen.