Chapter Two Hundred Twenty:
Psychology: Emily

Emily's bedroom, around two in the morning, Vernal Equinox.

Emily shoots a quick look at the baby monitor on the beside table, as she tosses the clothes in her closet around the room into piles only she can decipher. Did she hear something? She pauses, listening.

No. It's quiet. She shakes her head. Michael's too old for a baby monitor, anyway. Carly had just left it with her because she's out of her mind. She'd said it was because Emily's non-Mommy ears weren't used to listening for Kid noises, but Emily suspected it was more because Carly wanted to make sure that Emily heard any attempts to kidnap the kid. It didn't seem to matter how many times Emily told Carly that AJ was mellowing -- Carly didn't want to take the chance. And... given the history, Emily was not about to lose a finger engaging in an out-and-out fight.

Emily rubs her burning eyes with the back of her hand, and turns back to the closet. Ok. Project. She'd decided to spend tonight at her apartment so that she could pack. She was going to be leaving on a trip in a few days, and, as usual, her timing sucked. She wasn't going to have any time to get ready. Everything had to happen today.

WHY had she agreed to this? What had made her think "Ok... Late March... Sure, Carly. That's a good time to baby-sit for two weeks!"

Emily sighs. She hadn't thought that. Not at all. What she'd thought was... Olive branch. Mending bridges. Making her brother happy. The timing didn't matter... She had to put this first.

Carly had been slowly -- S*L*O*W*L*Y -- coming around on the AJ/Michael issue. Apparently AJ had torched the Lucky-engineer at working things out while they were all off playing Spencers and Cassadines last year. It has been a long process, rebuilding that. But it was important for her nephew -- her GOD son. And she was willing to be a part of the peace effort. She even made the decision to move into the Quartermaine Guest house while Carly was out of town. It served two purposes that way... reintroduce Michael to the mansion and the maniacs who populated it... and help mend her own fences with her family. After all, she'd fled that house almost a year earlier, and hadn't spent a single night on the grounds since. It was time to start making her way back into the fold -- on her terms, this time.

Yep. Gold star by her name, Little Miss Reasonable. The Sane Quartermaine. Emily shakes her head. Man... There's a title she didn't think she'd be earning again.

She glances over at the clock. It's 2 am. It's a new day.

Every day this week, Emily had found herself awake in the early morning, and had found herself staring at the clock and calculating what day she was on. This... was a big one. The first day of spring. The one year anniversary of the day she had lost her virginity.

Emily blinks tears out her eyes and turns back to her closet. She was NOT going to dwell. She was going to PACK. Packing was important. This trip was important. She and Nikolas had made a pact. She had to do this. And... She had to do this alone.

God, it's hard though. She'd known it would be -- but she hadn't expected it to be this difficult. She's been jumpy all week. Jumpier than she'd been in months. And every time she gets a moment to herself... which, bless his little Spencer-Q heart, Michael wasn't allowing her very often... She found herself flipping through memories. Often of Lucky. Mostly of Hannah.

Ah, grief. The gift that keeps on giving.

Emily lets out a groan and sinks down onto the bed, burying her face in her hands. Breathe, Emily, she instructs herself. Don't let this run away with you. Just breathe, it'll all be Ok.

She takes several deep breaths, pulling them deep into her lungs, and then pushing them back out. Careful and practiced, she feels the knot in her stomach loosen.

Fine. Ok. So maybe she just has to take a time out here. She's trying to do too much. AGAIN. Lucky would be so irritated with her. That said, who was he to talk? Wonderboy himself. Hey, she was just trying to keep up!

Emily stares at the telephone. So easy to just reach out and pick it up. Dial those seven little numbers that her fingers know so well. She hasn't talked to Lucky more than five minutes in the last week. Hasn't seen him in even longer. On one hand, she can't help but feel a bit of rush in how smoothly everything's gone -- being on her own again. On the other hand... she misses him like an appendage. It might be hopelessly romantic, but it's going to hurt to spend this day alone. Right at this moment, she'd give anything for him to appear in the doorway, look around at the chaos she's brought forth into the bedroom, and smirk at her. Ohhhh, she wishes he could come home. Again, what was she thinking? What made spending this time apart a good idea?

She had the answer to that one a little ready. It was like a tape in her head. "You have to know, Emily. You can't go away and not know that you can stand 100% on your own feet. You have to give it a try. And... this is the only time you have for it."

Emily had always been told that she was a strong and resilient person. She'd never shared the opinion. What, exactly, made her strong? When you find yourself orphaned before your twelfth birthday, it's not like there are a lot of immediate options for you. Emily remembered feeling very matter of fact about the whole thing. Like it was something that happened to everyone -- parents dying before high school. She tried to ignore the fact that she was the walking manifestation of every kid's greatest fear. She struggled, mostly, with the fact that she was now supposed to have new parents. And feel lucky for them. Feel like a part of this family when she still felt like a part of a family that was gone. That was, she realized now, what had taken the place of mourning for her mother. She'd mistaken finding a way to live with the Quartermaines to be the same thing as getting over her mother's death. And when she started doing drugs while barely in high school... that was about being a Q, right? Hey, she was just trying to fit in! Or maybe she was looking for attention. Or maybe it was just hard to be in that family. But it had nothing to do with still feeling alone! Nothing like that.

After she overdosed and started dealing with what she'd been doing -- people had trotted out that "strong" word again. Even after she went catatonic. "You're such a strong person, Emily".

What planet did these people LIVE on? She'd ranted to herself. Do strong people start smoking heroin-laced joints because their parents are ignoring them? Do they lose their minds because someone read their diary? Do they run around blacked-out hospitals with scalpels? What kind of nut was she? Why didn't anyone see how completely out of her mind she was? Why did they try to heal her with shopping sprees and trips to Rome? Didn't they see how messed up she was?

Well, everything's relative. It's hard to let your inner turmoil shine bright enough to show up in the Quartermaine Mansion. And, of course... She'd gone and fallen in love. That had put an entirely new spin on everything. It was hard to convince someone -- even yourself -- that you still needed help when you were walking around in a love-sick haze.

Codependency. That was the word Kevin Collins had hit her with on one of her first day in his office last fall. She'd sat in the chair across from him, eyes scanning the bookshelf on the back wall, trying to figure out which book would leave the largest bump on his head if she hit him with it. She was not there to solve some kind of dependency issue. She was there to stop the dreams. And here he was preaching to her about her relationship with her boyfriend. If there was one things she'd had enough of, it was being talked at about Lucky.

But he'd had a point. Emily had not exactly "bounced back" from their European Adventure. She'd tried to -- had denied there was a problem, even when she discovered that she was physically incapable of staying at her parents house. Shrugged off incidents where someone came up behind her and she nearly went into hysterics. Insisted that, given enough time, she wouldn't panic every time she found herself walking somewhere alone, without anyone else around.

It was the nightmares that were the worst. They were what finally pushed her into Kevin Collin's office. By that time she was having them every night -- waking up screaming, shaking in terror. Taking half an hour to slow her heart beat, be able to breathe normally again. It was hell.

"It finally happened," she'd said to Lucky, her voice quaking, as they sat on the floor of the bathroom after a particularly violent dream had driven her to the point of sickness. "I'm losing my mind, and all it took was one stupid Neanderthal with good aim."

"You're not losing your mind. Don't say that."

Emily had spat out an ironic laugh. "No. I'm perfectly healthy. LOOK at me, Lucky!"

"He hurt you--"

"He's DEAD, Lucky! They all are. And I know that, and I still can't --"

"Please, don't. Don't beat yourself up. Just..." He'd reached out and pulled her towards him, wrapping his arms around her protectively. She'd let her body fall against him, going limp in his arms. He'd held her tightly, whispering in her ear. "You're safe now. I'll keep you safe if it kills me. No one's going to hurt you like that again."

I had been the hardest thing she'd ever done -- letting Lucky help her through that. Being honest, letting him know how decimated she was feeling inside. She felt like she was ripping him up by telling him the truth... but it wasn't like she could hide it. He was too smart for that, and pretending would just make him feel like she didn't trust him -- or didn't think he was strong enough to handle it. She knew the only thing she could do for him was be honest. At that point, it had been all she had.

She'd started seeing Kevin to put an end to it. That's all she'd wanted to do -- get a pill or something, some kind of instant closure to the whole thing that would allow her to go back to what she'd been before -- Lucky's confidant. His unwavering, devoted, loving girlfriend. The person who would be there for him through anything.

Which was why she had been so violently opposed to being told that THAT would be a mistake.

"Lucky is going through so much right now!" she'd told Kevin. "Do you know what's going on with his family? I mean, his mother is just part of it. Things are completely messed up with his father, his brother is just... complicated. And he's trying to be a good brother to his sister, but I know it's all tearing him up--"

"That's Lucky's problem."

"Lucky's problems ARE my problems!"

"And you don't see anything wrong with that?"

Quack, she'd thought bitterly. Sanctimonious know-it-all. Like he wasn't just a big freak like the rest of them. She hadn't been that young when he went loony and stalked Felicia Jones. She was going to him for advice why, exactly? Why hadn't she just gone to Gail? Or found someone entirely unrelated to General Hospital? God, she hated this. She'd dealt with a lot of things more severe than being choked by a power-hungry psychopath and locked in a room for twenty-four hours. Why couldn't she deal with this?

The answer to that question had slowly become apparent. Josef wasn't the source of her current state of being. He was just the trigger. Emily's complete distrust in the concept of 'safety' ran a lot deeper than being jumped on a country path. Kevin pointed out, over and over, that she'd been flying without a net her whole life. If she said something about how Lucky never had much stability, he'd be quick to point out that she'd been in the same boat. If she said that Lucky had lost a lot, he steered it right back to her -- Hadn't she lost all the things Lucky had? Hadn't she, in her own way, gone through this herself? So she was afraid to be alone physically. How long had she been afraid to be alone emotionally?

Deep freakin' question. Terrifying answer. Suddenly it had all become far too clear to her. Memories started coming back -- things she'd long since buried. Things about her father, about his death. About being forced to stand still at the funeral even though the horrible black dress she was wearing was itching so badly she thought her skin would burn off. Watching, wide-eyed, while all these adults wept around her. Sitting on her mother's lap, in a rocking chair, and having her say "It's just us now, Emily. It's just us."

It nearly drove her out of her skin. It felt like everything was hitting her again -- only with a force she hadn't been prepared for. It had been just them... Just her and her mother, alone. Just them. And then her mother had left. And that had been it. She'd been alone. Alone with this family of lunatics who were trying to convince her that she was one of them. She'd known better -- had resisted their attempts -- particularly Monica's -- to bring her into the family. Even when she'd adjusted, started to think of them as her family... a part of her always held on to being the sole surviving member of the Bowen family. Sure, she'd become a Q. She's learned all the tricks of the family. She knew better than to expect turkey on thanksgiving, or to get too involved with the train set at Christmas. But no one in that house knew about being a Bowen. She'd always carried that loneliness, even if she hadn't wanted to look at it.

Before her mother was even gone, she'd invested in her relationship with Lucky -- the one person she knew who had problems of his own that he was willing to share. He'd been the only person who never looked at her with pity. He never seemed to think of her as the poor little orphan child. He never told her to feel grateful that she was going to be raised with more money than she could previously have imagined. He'd listened to her problems, she'd listened to his. It had worked SO well. No matter how she was getting along at the Quartermaine mansion, she knew she had Lucky. And after time, she had all the Quartermaines too. And she hadn't felt as isolated.

Then... Jason had his accident and changed forever. AJ went off the deep end -- a few dozen times. Alan started taking pills, Monica had an affair, her parents marriage hit more than a few rocks... and Lucky Spencer disappeared from her life.

God, that was why... For the first time in her life, Emily suddenly understood, fully and completely, why she'd started in with drugs. Matt had been her only friend at that point. And... What Matt did, she did. She'd made herself fit with him. She'd found a way to share his world, and it had nearly gotten her killed. All along she'd thought she did drugs to escape. Really, she'd just been trying to find something. Kevin felt there wasn't that much difference between that and the path her relationship with Lucky had taken. She was always more comfortable with his problems than she was with her own. Even after the last remaining member of her family was brutally murdered, all Emily had wanted to think about was how hard all of this was on LUCKY. Invest everything she had in his problems so that she wouldn't have to look at being alone again.

That had freaked Emily right out. In fact, she was pretty certain that her reaction tipped the Richter scale.

"You think I'm going to try to get you to give him up, don't you?" Kevin had asked, when Emily finally calmed down and managed to start breathing again.

"Aren't you? Isn't that what you're saying? That I use him like I used drugs. That I use his problems as an excuse not to deal with mine? You're saying that's the same thing I was doing with Matt."

"Not quite. Lucky's not a threat to your health, for starters. He's not going to get you killed."

"Tell that to my parents," Emily had grumbled.

"I'm just saying, Emily... That your dreams started after someone tried to take you away from him. Tried to separate you. What happened to you on that island was terrifying. It would be traumatic for anybody. For you, it's particularly devastating because it manifested your worst fear. You were told that Lucky had died. You were told that the one person you had left was gone. This after you lost your aunt. After you were robbed of your last link to your birth family. That's a terrifying proposition."

"I still have the Quartermaines."

"You've said that you can't live with them anymore."

"Yeah, but I still HAVE them. They still love me."

"Emily..." Kevin had looked very patient, but Emily had the feeling she was wearing on him. "The one lesson life seems to be conspiring to teach you is this: That you will lose everybody. You have seen an incredible amount of death for someone so young. Your birth parents, your grandparents, your aunt -- And your friend Matt. Even your brother Jason --"

"He's not dead."

"But he's not the same person he was."

"Yeah, but I still love him."

"I'm not saying you don't. I'm saying that you lost Jason Quartermaine. Whether or not there is someone else in his place, you still lost your brother."

"Ok, Ok. I get it." She'd let out a long breath. This was all making her head spin. What exactly was he saying "No one knows about this..." she'd looked at Kevin cautiously. "Lucky and I are engaged. We're... When the time's right, we're going to get married."

Kevin had nodded. Nothing else.

"You think I'm too young, huh? Too young and way too messed up."

"I think you have some work to do."

"I love him. I mean... You try to make him into some kind of addiction --"

"What do you love about him?"

Emily had frowned at him. "Is that a trick question?"

Kevin laughed. "Isn't everything? I'm a psychiatrist, Emily. Of course I'm interested in your answer. And yes, I'm going to pick apart everything you say. That's my job."

"Oh,"

"Can you give me an answer?

"Of course I can." Emily had shot him an uncharacteristically nasty look. Something about therapy made her feel free to be a bitch. "You know, he used to ask me that. Like it was impossible for him to believe that I could know everything I knew about him, and still be in love." She'd looked up Kevin, warily. "So I'm a little sensitive about the suggestion that my being in love with him is a sign of my own psychosis."

"Why don't you just tell me what you love about him. Maybe that will clear this up for you."

"I don't need it cleared up for me!" she'd protested. "I just get sick of having to justify it all the time."

"I'm not asking you to prove something to me," Kevin said, leaning towards her. "I'm not your father. I'm not going to have a fit because you're sleeping with the boy, or because you want a life with him. I just want to hear what you say."

Emily had realized she was gripping the arm of the chair so hard, she was about to pull the stuffing out of it. She'd taken a long breath, and started to talk.

"I... I love him because he's so... loving. A lot of people don't see that in him, but once he loves someone, he just loves them. You know? Like... all the way. It's amazing. I don't know anyone else who does that."

Kevin nodded. "And...?"

"That's acceptable?"

"You're not being graded, Emily."

"Ok. Well... That's a pretty incredible quality in a person. Having that much love in them, even if it sometimes gets him in trouble. And he's loyal. And whether he believes it or not, he's got a lot of integrity."

"From what you've told me, he certainly seems to have more than most people."

Emily nodded. "He always tries to do what's right for the people in his life. Like... he doesn't follow the rules in any traditional way... but he's got his code. And if he breaks that, it just kills him. And... That's why I feel safe with him. Because it hurts him so much to let someone down." She brushed her hair back from her face. "And I do feel safe with him. When he's around, I feel like everything's going to be all right, somehow. And... he's funny. He really is. And when he's in a good mood, he's so playful and goofy --" she found herself smiling, "He's like a big kid. You should see him with his sister, he's adorable." Her smile broadened. "And... He's exciting, Ok? Nothing is EVER boring with Lucky. There is nothing he can't make interesting. I mean, he has the most twisted way of looking at things. AND he laughs at my jokes. No one ever gets my jokes."

"You make him sound like a pretty incredible person."

"He IS a pretty incredible person! I mean... I don't love him cause he's got all these neat little problems or anything. I mean, if anything... I hate that!" Emily's face flushed. "You know, the truth is... Through all of the stuff that happened... sometimes I really felt like I was losing my best friend. Everything was so messed up -- I used to worry that it would just swallow him. He's been getting so much better. Like he's not totally gloom and doom all the time. And I know if I wasn't turning into the exorcist child in my sleep, he'd probably be great."

"You're doing it again, Emily."

"I can't HELP it! I love him, Ok? It hurts to hurt him. It hurts to watch him worry about me. It hurts to see the look on his face when he touches me and I jump. It's horrible! I can't stand doing this to him."

"You're just being where you are, Emily. You don't have any malicious intent --"

"Do you realize that EVERYONE Lucky has ever loved has hurt him? Has managed to totally rip out his guts once or twice? I don't like being that person."

"Love hurts, Emily. It's a fact of life."

"It doesn't have to hurt this much."

"Sometimes it does. Emily -- think of all the people in your life you love. Are you telling me none of them have ever hurt you? Are you telling me that Lucky's never hurt you the way you're hurting him? By not being happy? By being messed up?"

Emily looked down at the floor. She HATED it when Kevin made this much sense. It was really disturbing. It also suggested that she was going to have to let go of the one thing she still felt like she had a modicum of control over. She'd have to let Lucky in. Completely.

"I want it to stop," she said finally, her throat tight. "I'm so tired. I'm so sick of all of this. I don't want to feel this way anymore. I just want it to go away!"

"It will, Emily," Kevin had reached out and taken he hand. The first time he'd touched her in all the sessions she'd had with him. "I want you to listen to what I'm saying to you. You are an amazing young woman. You've been through things that most people live an entire lifetime without having to experience. There is no doubt in my mind that you will conquer this. And when you do, you're going to be a force to be reckoned with." Emily had laughed at that. Looked away. "What you have with Lucky is very special. I'm not suggesting for a minute that you're wrong to love him. That there is anything about your feelings for him that aren't real. All I've ever tried to say to you is this: You have to take care of yourself first. And you have to do that because you are far too special to lose yourself. And since I'd bet big money that Lucky's feelings for you are as strong as your feelings for him are... You're both going to benefit from the work we do here."

"I'm just not supposed to want to do it JUST to benefit him."

"Now you're getting it."

Emily had rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Fabulous. And *I* am supposed to be the headcase."

Somehow, Kevin had ended up being right. About everything. And things... God, things had gotten so good. Well -- for them. The Angst Poster Couple. Yeah, Ok -- they were afloat in a sea of turmoil, at the center of the ball of confusion -- but what was knew about that, really? She'd accepted that -- her life was always going to be crazy. Always going to include the absurd. If she went out one day, and it was raining toads, she couldn't see herself being all that surprised.

What was good... What was really good... Was that she'd figured out how to look at the world like it was a place where good things happened. She'd remembered all the reasons she liked being here. She was... happy right now. Ok, not at this exact moment... No, now she was stressed and sad, a little haunted and a little achy. Nothing she couldn't handle.

Emily runs a hand through her hair. Too late to call New York, she decides. And she can make it through this night. The worst thing she's going to have to deal with tomorrow is puffy eyes. In a few days, her boyfriend will be home, and the next part of her life will be ready to start. She's blessed. In her own sick and twisted way, she's been touched by something. An Angel with a really strange sense of humor, maybe. But there's no doubt in her mind. She is lucky.

Emily lets out a small laugh, and stands up to finish her packing.