True
by Abelard

Part 8

****AUTHOR'S NOTE: Teenage Sonny deals with the most painful moment of his life, and turns to Alexis for comfort.

I know we're skipping quite a lot of time in this part, but since we only have four more parts to go, I decided we needed to move things along. Apologies to anyone who *really* wanted to see them at the school dance.

This part is rated pg-13 for character death and disturbing imagery. Be forewarned: this is a dark one, folks.****

When the Holiday Dance was over, Sonny and Alexis didn't know how they'd say goodbye and survive the long stretches of time between Alexis's visits to New York. But they did survive, with dozens of letters and the rare phone call when one of them had enough cash to cover the long distance charges. The next summer, Alexis and Sonny saw each other nearly every day. They cooked in Mrs. C.'s kitchen and recited poetry to each other; although Alexis couldn't seem to learn how to make actual *meals*, she proved herself quite worthy in the cookies-and-cakes department, and Sonny acquired a taste for poetry in translation. They saw films, both monster movies (Sonny's favorites) and art house flicks (Alexis's), and watched the Fourth of July fireworks at Coney Island and saw Shakespeare in the Park. Alexis introduced Sonny to the New York Public Library, and Sonny taught Alexis where to go to observe truly great pick-up basketball.

They held hands often, kissed sometimes, did more than kiss whenever they could find a chance to be alone in Stefan's apartment (which was much rarer than either would have liked), and, as always since they met, dreamt of each other nearly every night.

What they never did was talk about Sonny's work for Joe Scully. Alexis knew Sonny had been promoted, and she did not care to know what his new position was. Whenever Sonny was working, Alexis was studying for her admission exams, and they also never talked about what they would do when Alexis went to college. Sonny's mother and stepfather, and Alexis's entire family, were pretty much off limits as well.

In short, it was the perfect summer.

Then, the new school year came, and hell came with it.

****

Alexis could sense Sonny's anxiety and desperation growing with every letter he sent. Deke's drinking was getting worse, and Sonny saw less and less of his mother. What was more disturbing, though, was that every time he saw her now, she had bruises and cuts. Every single time. Sonny knew Deke's violence was escalating. Sonny wrote to Alexis of all the ways he had begged his mother to come away with him, but it was never any use. She refused to go. Adela's only concern, it seemed, was that Sonny not go anywhere near Deke.

In one of his letters, Sonny wrote, "Yesterday, she pushed me out the door, and kept saying she wants me safe, she wants me to keep safe. How can she say that when every single day, she's in more and more danger with that bastard? I don't know what to do." Alexis knew the discolored spots on the stationary were the marks left behind by Sonny's tears on the page, and Alexis cried for him and his mother, both.

Twice, Alexis pleaded with Stefan for money, so that she could give it to Sonny and his mother and they could escape Deke. She wasn't surprised that Stefan refused her, or why: "It's not that I don't sympathize with the young man's situation, Alexis, but my fortune isn't my own, you know that." Alexis knew. Helena regulated the balance sheets of the Casadines so exactingly, if Alexis received even one cent more than she was supposed to, Helena would know about it within a week. Alexis felt totally helpless and scared, because Cassadines know something about curses and doom, and Alexis could sense that doom was speeding to Brooklyn.

So she almost wasn't surprised - almost - when one midnight, at the beginning of her winter term, she heard stones pattering against her dormitory window, and when she looked out on the snow-covered grounds, she saw Sonny standing there. Alexis pulled on her robe and heavy coat and rushed down the stairs, not caring if her suitemates or anyone else heard her. When she got outside, she Sonny was only wearing a long shirt and pants; it was as if he hadn't noticed that the temperature was ten degrees.

"My God, you must be freezing!!" Alexis took her coat off immediately and threw it around his shivering shoulders. "Sonny, how did you get here?" Then she saw his eyes. And realized it didn't matter how he had gotten there.

She led him by the hand up the ancient wooden stairs of the dormitory and into her bedroom. She turned on the small lamp on her desk, and her roommate Kristen came drowsily awake. "What the…?" Kristen murmured, rising up on her elbows.

"I'm sorry, Kristen. Can you let us talk alone for a little while, please?" Alexis asked.

"Us? Who's…Oh," Kristen stopped asking questions when she saw Sonny sitting on Alexis's bed, looking as if his world had just come to an end. "Okay, I'll be in Lisa and Bridget's room, if you need…anything." Kristen hastily pulled a sweatshirt on over her pajamas, and with a final glance at Alexis, left.

Sonny was still shaking from cold. Alexis took her coat off of him, and wrapped him up in her blanket, then took the blanket off Kristen's bed and layered it on him as well. Then she sat beside him on the bed and didn't touch him, and didn't look at him. He didn't look at her, either. His eyes weren't seeing anything.

"My mother is dead," Sonny said. Alexis knew he would. "My mother is…she's dead." Alexis didn't need to look at him to know that he was weeping silent tears. She could hear the way he was choking slightly on his words. From somewhere deep inside her, a flash of a woman's face came to her - possibly her mother, whom she didn't remember at all - and she suddenly knew exactly how Sonny felt.

Alexis didn't pry, because she knew Sonny would tell the story when he could bear to hear himself utter the words. "I went over when I knew Deke had left for the station house. I found her in the kitchen. Lying on the floor. Bloody, her face was beaten…beaten…to a pulp…" Sonny's voice dissolved in sobs for a few endless minutes. "There were welts, from his belt, on her arms and legs, and a…a cut across her stomach…he sliced her…" Alexis's breath caught as she saw the image of a knife in her mind's eye, a knife raised high, gleaming for an instant, then descending, slashing a woman's flesh. "Her blood was all over her dress, and it was all over the floor. I put my hands on the wound, but it kept coming, there was so much of it…Jesus…" Sonny pulled his knees up to his chest. "I put my ear to her mouth, and she was still breathing. I prayed to God, and I called the hospital, and I held her until the ambulance came. I thought, please don't her…please don't let her die. Please don't take her from me. But she never made it…she didn't make it to the hospital." Alexis finally looked over at Sonny; he had put his forehead on his knees, and she couldn't see his face.

They sat in silence for several minutes. Finally, Alexis asked in a soft voice, "Did she say anything to you in the ambulance?"

Sonny lifted his head and stared straight ahead. There was no expression on his face when he said, "She only said, 'Mi hijo. Mi hijo.'" Sonny turned his head and his eyes met Alexis's at last.

Alexis nodded. "Her last thoughts were for you."

Sonny shut his eyes. Then, he abruptly cast off the blankets Alexis had put around him, and stood up. He began to pace the length of her room. For the first time, Alexis noticed the blood on the front of Sonny's shirt. She realized he hadn't even changed before coming to her school. Everything he was telling her about had happened a few short hours before. "Did you hitch a ride here?" Alexis asked.

Sonny shook his head. "One of Mr. Scully's guys drove me."

"What?" Alexis's eyes went wide. "Is he still here?"

"No, I told him I'd catch the bus back. Mr. Scully just wanted to make sure I got here in one piece."

So, Sonny had gone to Scully right after watching his mother die. "Sonny, what did you talk to Mr. Scully about?" Alexis asked with suspicion in her voice. When he didn't answer, she stood in his path. He stopped pacing. "What did you ask him to do?" she pressed.

Sonny knew exactly what she meant. "I didn't ask. He offered." He tried to step around her to resume his nervous walking, but Alexis held him in place by putting her hands on his chest.

"What was his offer?" Her eyes were narrowed and locked onto his, probing for the truth.

Sonny sighed in frustration. "Look, I ran over to the coffee shop after I left the hospital. I found Scully and I told him what happened. I said a few things about Deke, nothing you can't guess. And Mr. Scully asked if Deke was gonna be on duty tomorrow night. He said, I just have to be somewhere for a few hours, with people, and that…" Sonny trailed off at the look on Alexis's face.

"And what? And he would take care of it for you? Is that what he said?" Alexis said, her voice getting so quiet she was almost whispering.

"Alexis, what do you expect me to do?" Sonny snapped. He put his hands on his hips. "Do you expect me, after watching my mother die at that bastard's hands, to do *nothing*?! Is that what you think is right?!" Sonny had only yelled at Alexis once before, the first time she'd seen him bear the bruises of Deke's violence. It didn't stop her from talking back then, and it didn't stop her now.

"I'll tell you what I *don't* think is right: murder. Sonny, if you let Joe Scully put a hit out on your stepfather, you will be every bit as guilty of murder as he is!" Her hands were also on her hips.

"Okay. You and I agree that murder is wrong. No one can kill another person and get away with it. Well, Deke killed my mother. And by God, he is not going to get away with it," Sonny vowed.

"Then report him. Turn him in, Sonny! He's guilty, you know it, and all of your neighbors will testify that they knew what he did to your mother…"

"No, they won't! Don't you get it? They *won't.* I can't go to the cops because Deke *is* the cops. He's the big man over there, and besides that, he's dirty. Even if someone did listen to me, me of all people - a street punk, a drop out, a low man on Joe Scully's totem pole - even if someone bothered to write up a report, do you think it would take Deke longer than an hour to bury or burn that thing? Alexis, I've got one shot to make this right, one shot, and I'm taking it."

"Make this right?! Sonny, what's right about having a man killed? Even if he is a monster - Sonny, it wasn't right that your mother and you suffered for all those years. It wasn't right that your mother was murdered today. But killing her murderer won't bring her back!"

"No, but it'll make me feel.."

"What? Make you feel better?"

"No! It'll make me feel like justice was *done*!" Sonny hissed, his eyes wild.

Alexis took a step closer to him and got right in his face. "It will make you a monster. It will make you just as much of a monster as Deke is. You won't become that person tomorrow, or next week, or maybe not even next year, but if you do this, Sonny, someday you will look in the mirror and you will see the face of a monster staring back at you, and you will be no better than your stepfather."

Sonny looked like he was going to explode, but Alexis didn't fear for a moment that he was going to hit her. He looked madly around her room and picked up an empty soda bottle from Kristen's desk, and smashed it to the floor. The crashing sound brought Alexis's suitemates to her door; obviously they'd been listening from the living room.

"Alexis!" Bridget said through the door, knocking hard. "Are you all right in there?"

"I'm fine," she answered. To Sonny, she said in a quieter, but more lethal, tone, "Do you feel better after that little show of violence? Do you? Sonny, what do you think Joe Scully is going to make you after he does you this 'favor'? You're going to owe him your soul after this. What do you think he's going to do with you? Let you go, let you be whoever you want to be?" Alexis shook her head. "You aren't going to have to bloody your hands with Deke's killing, Sonny, but you'll be bathing in other people's blood before long. Deke's murder will mean justice to you, but what about the first murder you commit, personally, carrying out Joe Scully's justice?"

"You don't know anything about my life. You don't know what it has been like for me, to live the way I have lived and watched my mother get beaten down, in her mind and body and spirit and heart every single damn day since you were a kid. You do not know what it is like to watch your mother be murdered…"

"I KNOW MORE THAN YOU THINK!" Alexis yelled suddenly, shocking both of them with her volume and conviction. Alexis was momentarily stunned; she didn't know where that statement or her vehemence had come from. What was she saying? She didn't even remember her mother. Alexis shook her head to clear it and said, "Look, I know that you are in pain, and have been in pain for a very long time. Sonny, whatever pain your mother was in, she's free of it now. She wouldn't want this for you. She wouldn't want you to take an eye for an eye. Her last thoughts were of you; she would not want her son to become a killer. And I *do* know what it's like to live with killers, I've done it my whole life. And I will tell you right now, Sonny, right now, I swear on my soul, that I will *not* live with a killer, ever, ever again. You have Deke killed, you'll lose me. Forever."

Alexis was breathing hard when she was done, but she'd never been so certain of anything as what she had just said. If Sonny chose to commit murder, then that was the end of them. She didn't know if her threat would even the slightest effect on Sonny's actions, but she felt like she had to say it. It was the truth.

Sonny walked out of Alexis's room without saying another word.

Alexis watched him storm out into the darkness from her window. She heard Kristen, Lisa, and Bridget tiptoe in from the living room. "Oh my God," Kristen said. "Are you okay?"

"That was some fight," Lisa said.

"You did the right thing," Bridget said. Alexis looked over her shoulder at her friends. "Sorry, we couldn't help but hear you. These doors aren't so thick, you know."

"She's right, Alexis," murmured Kristen. "You couldn't condone murder."

Alexis walked slowly to her bed, where Sonny had just sat and cried and told her of his mother's death. She sat down heavily on the very edge, and wrapped herself up in the blankets Sonny had worn earlier. Then she started to weep.

Kristen, Bridget, and Lisa immediately swarmed around her, hugging her and telling her it would be alright, it would all be better in the morning, she had done and said all that she could. "He came here ," Alexis sobbed. "He came to *me*, for help, for some comfort, without even changing his shirt - the blood was still on his shirt!" Her sobs grew louder. "And I - I - what did I do? What did I do?"

The other girls had no answer, so they just held their friend as she cried.

Forty minutes later, a bedraggled, fatigued, and freezing Sonny walked into Alexis's suite to find her and her four friends huddled on Alexis's tiny twin-sized bed.

"I found a phone and called Mr. Scully collect," Sonny said, shocking all four girls. Their heads snapped up and their eyes showed their astonishment at Sonny's standing in the doorway. Lisa, Bridget, and Kristen all rose and left Alexis's room immediately, shutting the door behind them.

Sonny got to his knees before Alexis and took her hands into his. He looked so deeply into her eyes, she thought she could see his soul. "I called it off. There won't be any hit tomorrow. Alexis, I love you."

part 9