Fic: Friends and Foe, Part 3 (GH, Nikolas)
Title: Friends and Foe
Author: empressearwig
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set Fall 2007. Events don’t correspond exactly.
Author's Notes: This was not my idea. I blame lapiccolina entirely. Thanks to sugarpromises for the encouragement, and to normative_jean for the technical assistance. This story was a bit of an experiment, to see if I could understand and write characters that I’m not particularly fond of. I think it turned out fairly well.
Summary: A circle of friends bound together through adversity; four souls who desperately need things their own families can’t give them.
And the little love I had
For all my friends and foe
And the little lines we've drawn between us all have
Taken hold
~ The Frames, Friends and Foe
Nikolas, Part 3: Fairytale Gone Bad
Out of my life, Out of my mind
Out of the tears we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave this mess behind
Out of my head, Out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they’re bad
Tell them it’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad
~ Sunrise Avenue, Fairytale Gone Bad
You don’t really believe in fairy tales.
But when you’re a prince (empty title though it may be), it’s the first thing people think of when they meet you. You understand, but think that if they’d spent more time reading the Brothers Grimm instead of watching Disney classics, they’d understand that there’s no such thing as happily ever after with singing animals.
The singing animals have always secretly frightened you anyway.
* * * * *
Truthfully, fairy tales didn’t really enter your life till you moved to Port Charles. Your uncle and grandmother didn’t believe in bedtime stories, at least not fictional ones. When you have a family history of attempts at world domination, stolen brides, and blood feuds, reality is more fantastic than most writers could ever imagine.
One in your endless string of nannies used to read you Russian folk takes, thinking them suitable fare for a small boy. When your grandmother found out, your nanny was let go, and her replacement was left with strict instructions about what was appropriate for a prince.
Years later, you buy a book of the same folk tales, and you read them to your son at night. There may not be any fairies in them, but you won’t deny your son the same type of story telling that all small American children enjoy.
You want him to be the little boy you weren’t.
* * * * *
Moving to Port Charles, you’re surrounded by these supposed fairy tales come to life. Your mother and her husband are supposedly the epitome of devoted, forever love, and when your brother throws his perfect family in your face, you have to fight back the impulse to throw how it all started back in his. One day you finally can’t hold it back any longer, and you think you can literally see his belief in fairy tales shatter before your eyes.
It’s satisfying in a way, taking what you never had away from the brother who had what you lacked.
* * * * *
Emily was another of the fairy tale people you met in Port Charles, but where Lucky inspires destruction, Emily always inspired you to protect that fragile belief in the happily ever after. She was proof that an orphan who has lost everything can really be adopted into a loving, rich family and suddenly have it all.
When she looks at you, you can tell she thinks that you can make all her dreams come true and complete the fairy tale. But you know that a Cassadine prince has no business masquerading as prince charming.
Years later, when you help her through her battle with breast cancer and fall in love for real, you start to let her belief in fairy tales rub off on you. And through bouts of amnesia, doppelgangers, insane grandmothers, rape, and falling in love with other people, you always believe that the fairy tale that connects you will bring you back together. Your reunion is on much more human terms, each of you seeing the other as a human being, rather than living wish fulfillment, but the remnants of the dream linger.
Maybe you can’t be prince charming, but a part of you wants to be.
* * * * *
As you start having violent episodes, your first instinct is to hide them from Emily. Your image of her as a fairy tale princess is too ingrained to completely escape, and what you forget is that every princess has a backbone of steel underneath their delicate exterior. Emily is no different, but remembering that has never been your strong suit. The urge to protect is deep-seeded, and fighting back your inner nature has always been difficult.
When she finally does find out, she becomes your biggest advocate. The two of you have been through so much, and neither of you are willing to let it go without a fight this time. Or at least, that’s the way it starts.
As the weeks go by, and the random outbursts continue, you feel Emily begin to slip away. You’re not sure what to make of it at first, because her work at the hospital has always given her an erratic schedule. But when you start to make discreet inquiries, you find that the extra shifts she’s been claiming haven’t really existed, and the plans she’s claimed to have with Elizabeth were all just a cover.
You want to demand an explanation, but you aren’t sure you have the right. You have your own secrets, after all.
* * * * *
One night, when Emily has again failed to come home, you decide to seek her out. You may be losing your mind, but you don’t want that to mean losing her as well.
On a whim, you decide to go to Lucky’s to see if he has any idea where Emily might be. He’s always had instincts about Emily you haven’t been able to match, and a part of you has always been jealous of their shared history. Emily may be yours now, but she’ll always be someone else who was Lucky’s first. A tiny sliver of the jealousy your grandmother so carefully nurtured remains, and you suspect it will never fully go away.
Walking up the steps to the house, you spy the glow of the television screen through the windows and hear the noise not only of the television screen, but of the voices of your brother and lover. Unable to stop yourself, you peek in through the windows, keeping yourself carefully out of sight.
The scene in front of you is perfectly innocuous, but at the same time, it leaves you feeling as though you’ve been betrayed. Emily and Lucky sitting on the couch, arguing loudly about whatever drivel they’re watching, throwing popcorn to punctuate their points. There’s nothing at all untoward about what’s in front of you, but they’re happy. Something you and Emily haven’t really been in months, and something you don’t think your brother deserves while supposedly grieving the dissolution of his marriage to Elizabeth for the second time.
As you leave, you wonder if Emily even considered you, while you were busy considering her.
* * * * *
When Emily slips into bed beside you that night, she moves to cuddle against you, in your normal fashion. But you feign sleep and roll away, leaving her with the sight of your bare back. It’s petty, but it seems the fairest thing to do since you irrationally feel that she’s turned her back on you.
As you try to fall asleep in the dark, you think you were better off when happily ever after was just the end to stories you knew better than to believe in.
Author: empressearwig
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set Fall 2007. Events don’t correspond exactly.
Author's Notes: This was not my idea. I blame lapiccolina entirely. Thanks to sugarpromises for the encouragement, and to normative_jean for the technical assistance. This story was a bit of an experiment, to see if I could understand and write characters that I’m not particularly fond of. I think it turned out fairly well.
Summary: A circle of friends bound together through adversity; four souls who desperately need things their own families can’t give them.
And the little love I had
For all my friends and foe
And the little lines we've drawn between us all have
Taken hold
~ The Frames, Friends and Foe
Nikolas, Part 3: Fairytale Gone Bad
Out of my life, Out of my mind
Out of the tears we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave this mess behind
Out of my head, Out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they’re bad
Tell them it’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad
~ Sunrise Avenue, Fairytale Gone Bad
You don’t really believe in fairy tales.
But when you’re a prince (empty title though it may be), it’s the first thing people think of when they meet you. You understand, but think that if they’d spent more time reading the Brothers Grimm instead of watching Disney classics, they’d understand that there’s no such thing as happily ever after with singing animals.
The singing animals have always secretly frightened you anyway.
* * * * *
Truthfully, fairy tales didn’t really enter your life till you moved to Port Charles. Your uncle and grandmother didn’t believe in bedtime stories, at least not fictional ones. When you have a family history of attempts at world domination, stolen brides, and blood feuds, reality is more fantastic than most writers could ever imagine.
One in your endless string of nannies used to read you Russian folk takes, thinking them suitable fare for a small boy. When your grandmother found out, your nanny was let go, and her replacement was left with strict instructions about what was appropriate for a prince.
Years later, you buy a book of the same folk tales, and you read them to your son at night. There may not be any fairies in them, but you won’t deny your son the same type of story telling that all small American children enjoy.
You want him to be the little boy you weren’t.
* * * * *
Moving to Port Charles, you’re surrounded by these supposed fairy tales come to life. Your mother and her husband are supposedly the epitome of devoted, forever love, and when your brother throws his perfect family in your face, you have to fight back the impulse to throw how it all started back in his. One day you finally can’t hold it back any longer, and you think you can literally see his belief in fairy tales shatter before your eyes.
It’s satisfying in a way, taking what you never had away from the brother who had what you lacked.
* * * * *
Emily was another of the fairy tale people you met in Port Charles, but where Lucky inspires destruction, Emily always inspired you to protect that fragile belief in the happily ever after. She was proof that an orphan who has lost everything can really be adopted into a loving, rich family and suddenly have it all.
When she looks at you, you can tell she thinks that you can make all her dreams come true and complete the fairy tale. But you know that a Cassadine prince has no business masquerading as prince charming.
Years later, when you help her through her battle with breast cancer and fall in love for real, you start to let her belief in fairy tales rub off on you. And through bouts of amnesia, doppelgangers, insane grandmothers, rape, and falling in love with other people, you always believe that the fairy tale that connects you will bring you back together. Your reunion is on much more human terms, each of you seeing the other as a human being, rather than living wish fulfillment, but the remnants of the dream linger.
Maybe you can’t be prince charming, but a part of you wants to be.
* * * * *
As you start having violent episodes, your first instinct is to hide them from Emily. Your image of her as a fairy tale princess is too ingrained to completely escape, and what you forget is that every princess has a backbone of steel underneath their delicate exterior. Emily is no different, but remembering that has never been your strong suit. The urge to protect is deep-seeded, and fighting back your inner nature has always been difficult.
When she finally does find out, she becomes your biggest advocate. The two of you have been through so much, and neither of you are willing to let it go without a fight this time. Or at least, that’s the way it starts.
As the weeks go by, and the random outbursts continue, you feel Emily begin to slip away. You’re not sure what to make of it at first, because her work at the hospital has always given her an erratic schedule. But when you start to make discreet inquiries, you find that the extra shifts she’s been claiming haven’t really existed, and the plans she’s claimed to have with Elizabeth were all just a cover.
You want to demand an explanation, but you aren’t sure you have the right. You have your own secrets, after all.
* * * * *
One night, when Emily has again failed to come home, you decide to seek her out. You may be losing your mind, but you don’t want that to mean losing her as well.
On a whim, you decide to go to Lucky’s to see if he has any idea where Emily might be. He’s always had instincts about Emily you haven’t been able to match, and a part of you has always been jealous of their shared history. Emily may be yours now, but she’ll always be someone else who was Lucky’s first. A tiny sliver of the jealousy your grandmother so carefully nurtured remains, and you suspect it will never fully go away.
Walking up the steps to the house, you spy the glow of the television screen through the windows and hear the noise not only of the television screen, but of the voices of your brother and lover. Unable to stop yourself, you peek in through the windows, keeping yourself carefully out of sight.
The scene in front of you is perfectly innocuous, but at the same time, it leaves you feeling as though you’ve been betrayed. Emily and Lucky sitting on the couch, arguing loudly about whatever drivel they’re watching, throwing popcorn to punctuate their points. There’s nothing at all untoward about what’s in front of you, but they’re happy. Something you and Emily haven’t really been in months, and something you don’t think your brother deserves while supposedly grieving the dissolution of his marriage to Elizabeth for the second time.
As you leave, you wonder if Emily even considered you, while you were busy considering her.
* * * * *
When Emily slips into bed beside you that night, she moves to cuddle against you, in your normal fashion. But you feign sleep and roll away, leaving her with the sight of your bare back. It’s petty, but it seems the fairest thing to do since you irrationally feel that she’s turned her back on you.
As you try to fall asleep in the dark, you think you were better off when happily ever after was just the end to stories you knew better than to believe in.