Confrontation
Rated R for language
by Paradise

Comments: Thank you to Jackie and Genie!


December 4th, 1998

     "You wanna explain it to me, I’m right here,” Bobbie said.
     “No I don’t,” Laura said smoothly, tired of this vendetta.
     Laura began to head out of Kelly’s then turned around back to her rival.
     “You know what, actually I do, assuming I have your attention,” she said to Bobbie. When Laura saw that she did, she began. “First of all, my marriage to your brother is NONE of your business, but for the record I’ll tell you way more than you need to know because I want you to understand something. Yes, I testified for Stefan so that he wouldn’t go to prison for the rest of his life and my son wouldn’t lose the one constant he’s had in his whole life. I’ve been a terrible mother to Nikolas, some of it out of my hands, some of it my own bad choices, but I did this for him, and neither you, Luke, nor anyone else will ever make me sorry. I tried to tell Luke, I came home and found him and he went hysterical at the name Nikolas. I begged him to just let me give him one sentence, just this. I’m going to testify for Stefan about something I didn’t tell you about. I was on the balcony when Katherine fell and I know Stefan didn’t do it. But would Luke listen? No, of course not, because it involved my “Cassadine” son. So he screamed at me to shut up and ran out of the house, slamming the door in my face and believe me Bobbie I am not exaggerating. So Luke being caught surprise that I was on the witness stand is his own damned fault because the very same night I didn’t tell him I witnessed Katherine falling, he neglected to tell me our son was living on the streets because he hated us both so much he couldn’t stand to look at us. So before you defend your perfect brother, remember that I’m not the only one who “omitted” something here.”
     Bobbie was furious as hell at Laura and was now even more angry that Laura was making sense, even justifying her actions.
     “Now lemme tell you something else. I don’t know why you have always thought I was…oh what did you call it…a blonde princess with everything handed to her in with a silver spoon? Well did you know that the day I was born I was pronounced dead? Let me tell you a couple a things since you are SO curious about why I am the way I am and why I make the choices I make, the good and the bad. I started smoking cigarettes at the age of eight. My mother was a school teacher and my father bounced from job to job. I was cooking dinner for me and my sister from the time I was six to the time I found out my mother wasn’t my mother. I used to present myself to my molesting uncle so he would never touch Amy.”
     Laura saw Bobbie’s eyes widen.
     “What? You surprised that someone would be perverted enough to touch a six year old girl in a way a father never would? Well then this will shock you. Sometimes it got so bad, sometimes my parents were screaming so loud and so often that I actually liked it when he touched me, that even though I knew it was evil and wrong and disgusting, it was attention and I craved it, every awful, perverted moment of it I liked!” Laura said with tears growing in her eyes. “Let me tell you another story. One day when I was twelve and I’d finally stopped smoking I was out with my best friend Gary, and this beautiful woman walked up to us and offered us a pizza. I was entranced by this beautiful woman only to discover that I was never Laura Vining, that I was a switched baby with a dead still-born and that my mother was a doctor and was suing for custody of me. I was too young and NO one explained to me what was really going on, so all of a sudden I’m in a new town, nothing is familiar to me but this woman who smothers me with love telling me I’m her daughter, when I have a mother and father and a sister I miss terribly. Do you think I felt loved?” Laura asked with disgust in her voice. “The battle wasn’t for love, it was for a right. I had become a right, a piece of property, where no one was at fault except for me for not being able to divide myself in half and give half to Barbara and half to Lesley. I was ruining my birth mother’s marriage and almost instantly the man I thought was my father my whole life divorced Barbara and shortly after died. My birth mother, the mother I was living with, the one I loved was comforting Amy, who by the way was deserted on the street by her mother and she found her way to my doorstep, begging Lesley and I to take her in. Meanwhile there’s this sexy nurse who’s always looking at me like I’m an insect that needs to be killed instantly. The mother I’d grown up with had fled, never to see me again while my birth mother and step father were struggling through marital problems and suddenly there’s this man…older, more sophisticated, paying attention to me. A little blonde child who knew NOTHING about the evilness a person can inflict upon you, a little girl who knew this man was old enough to be her father but was so desperate for attention she not only fell in love with him, she let him use her just to feel like someone was looking at her. This little girl wanted to have sex with this man not because she wanted to, but because she was so empty inside and he was the only one who seemed interested in her, fascinated by her. Asked her how her day was and told her she was beautiful. This little girl craved every second of his attention. He was the only one who really loved her, that’s what she found herself believing. So when she feels her lowest and most unloved she decides to runaway with this one person who made her feel like something more than dust in the wind, and guess what, she finds out he was never interested in her at all but instead was using her to get to her mother. A middle aged man used this fifteen year old idiot, knowing she had fallen in love with him and used to her to get to her mother…and she broke. She broke inside and she wanted to kill him as he taunted her and teased her and threw her letters back in her face and you’re right! Little Laura Webber lost it and pushed him. Have you ever pushed anyone Bobbie?” Laura asked, tears rolling down her face by now but she wasn’t about to stop. “Have you ever pushed someone and watched them stumble and hit their head so perfectly that they will never take another breath when all you wanted to do was get them as far away from you as you possibly could? Have you ever blacked out and then realized your mother took the fall for it? Have you ever had a perfect, beautiful man fall in love with you while this beautiful bitch does everything she can to break you? To make you go insane? To make a sixteen year old child murder someone else just to snag the guy? Have you?”
     Bobbie closed her eyes briefly in shame.
     “I knew this woman,” Laura said coldly. “I was still a girl but I knew this woman. This smart, sassy, sexy woman who was willing to try to make a 16 year old GIRL go INSANE just to get a man! And by some miracle she lost. And over the next few years we began to tolerate each other, even love each other and then one night, in the fog, I disappear-“
     “Laura stop-“
     “Don’t you tell me to stop now, you wanted to know why, I’m telling you why, so you better suck this up for all it’s worth because I am NEVER telling anyone this again. There was a man, a handsome, powerful man. A man so obsessed with me that I wasn’t allowed to be in a room with any other person for months except for him. A man who helped Helena Cassadine STEAL my life! Take away Laura Webber Spencer, the just married bride who was so happy she thought it was too good to be true. Well it was. Because I learned what hatred was the day I made a deal with Stavros. I learned what anger was the first time Stavros touched me. I learned was rape was the first night we slept together. Do you hear me? I finally learned what that word meant. Not from my uncle, not from Luke. I would watch him push himself in and out of me, I would stare at the ceiling and bite my lips until they bled, then I would turn away, feeling like filth and he would clutch to him in a spoon position. I would feel his lips on me, his tongue in my mouth, demanding, taking, never asking, never pleasing. But only showing me that I belonged to him. In our entire marriage, those two years, I said no to him twice. The first time I was left with three broken ribs and a broken ankle, not to mention the lacerations and the bruises. The second time I said no to him I was pregnant with Nikolas, with a mild concussion and dislocated hip. I learned to be a slave. I learned that everything was his, everything of me was his, and that if I found something else that I loved, he would take it from me.”
     “Laura-“ Bobbie began.
     “Oh don’t stop me now, we’re getting to the good stuff,” Laura said, her face full of anger, her voice full of contempt, her eyes full of tears. “I had a horse that I rode when Stavros was away on business trips. He caught me riding it once. He stopped the horse, snatched me off of him and made me watch while he made the horse jump a jump far too high so it broke his leg. The horse lie there, and Stavros shot it in the head, three times, echoing in my mind. Stavros didn’t trust me after that so he had two trained dogs to guard me, to imprison me. Pollux though had a beautiful heart and I loved him, he was the first thing I ever loved on that island. Stavros came home and saw me petting him. That night I saw his bloody collar on my pillow.”
     Bobbie was feeling encruciating sympathy for Laura.
     “Laura I’m-“
     “No you’re not,” Laura interrupted, “But you will be. Then one day I have a child, a beautiful child that I love more than ANYTHING in the world. Still I’m a prisoner, still I lie beneath Stavros as he grunts and rapes me. One day Helena shows me a newspaper and gives me photographs of my entire family, even you. Engaged to Brock. Did you know I developed multiple personality on that island? That I did go insane? Can you imagine how I couldn’t?”
     “No,” Bobbie said honestly.
     “Thank you, that’s the first decent you’ve said to me in years. So suddenly, I have a chance to be a person again. There’s a boat, there are no guards. I have a choice, do you understand what a choice meant to me? Do you think I only went back for Luke? Do you think I abandoned my son only for Luke? I never thought I’d stay in Port Charles but for a few days, yet I was my own person again. No multiple personalities, no more suicide attempts, no more going to the cliffs and screaming at the top of my lungs for two years begging someone to find me and rescue me. I thought I finally had my choices, and I did, in a way. Until the love of my life, my son was kept from me. Now you know what that feels like, only you had a choice. I had planned three weeks in Port Charles, that was all. But it turned out to be forever. And you know about thinking about your child everyday, wondering what their smile looks like, wondering if they’re happy, wondering what they’re doing that very second. So you think I made the wrong choice by “abandoning” my son, I didn’t have a choice Bobbie, fuck your opinions of me. And another thing, I didn’t choose to fake my own death, did you know they didn’t even tell me? Not my husband, not my son, not Sonny. I walk into a building praying I’ll find my mother and someone throws a blanket over me, I hear an explosion, I’m shoved into a van with my catatonic mother, taken to a house in the middle of nowhere, my ONLY concern was trying to give my mother back the life I stole from her. Help her get the years back she lost because of me. So yes, I screwed up, but you wanna know what my biggest mistake was? Trusting your love for me. Trusting you above everyone else. I called you first, I trusted you first, above EVERYONE. And when you saw me alive, there wasn’t even a flicker of happiness before you slapped me and told me you wished I’d never come back to life. And now look at you, lecturing me on supposedly siding with Stefan over Luke when you turned against EVERYONE to side with a Cassadine, to marry a Cassadine. All I’m doing is seeing him a couple times a week when I’m with my son, how dare I, right? I should spend MORE time away from my son pawning for a husband who won’t only won’t speak to me, but won’t even let me even see his face. I’ve done what I can to show I love him and I’d do a helluva lot more if he’d let me, but I’m gonna push him until he has no choice but to listen to me. So call me a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad person, but I’ve just told you things I will never repeat. I am screwed up, always have been, always will be. Things have happened to me that have shaped me, some are good and some are horrific. I don’t know why or how you developed your perfect princess everybody worships Laura opinion, but you can take it and go to hell,” Laura hissed as the last tear fell from her eye and she left Kelly’s, leaving a stunned and confused Bobbie.

Two Days Later

     There was a knock on Laura’s door and she dreaded opening it. She regretted opening it the minute she saw it was Bobbie.
     “Bobbie,” she sighed. “I’m really not in the mood. No Luke has not called and for your information I’m not having an affair on him so that’s pretty much all you need to know.”
     Bobbie swallowed.
     “May I come in?”
     Laura didn’t want to, but stepped aside as Bobbie walked in.
     “Laura two years ago I told you I had a child, you were the only person I told…at all, ever. Until the truth came out and I didn’t have to tell anyone because Carly had come out and made it known. I somehow for some reason trusted you, I didn’t know why at the time but I never expected you to pull me in your arms and tell me how strong I was. And I understand your reasons for telling me about Nikolas, I know that if Helena’s threat already murdered your mother, that you were trying to save my mother and my nephew’s life, for that I’m grateful for. I get jealous of you. You are so beautiful. Every man does worship you, whether you see it or not.”
     Bobbie sighed and began to pace a little.
     “When we thought you were dead Nikolas asked me about you. I told him every man thought you were this precious thing that needed protection, but that in reality, you were strong, and that you were an iron fist covered in a velvet glove. I’m aware that Stefan is in love with you, and that burns inside me so deep it makes me want to kill you, but like always, it’s not your fault.”
     Laura felt the guilt then, but chose to say nothing to protect her son.
     “Now I don’t know whether you’re attracted to him or not but I know that once again, a man I loved, is in love with you. I told Stefan once that I loved you most days…and I still do.”
     Laura could see that was harder than hell for Bobbie to say. And like always, Laura reached out first. Bobbie took the hand Laura offered and Laura pulled her closer.
     “I know you’ve been through hell,” Laura said. “But so have I, and I don’t need you to give me more.”
     “Sometimes I forget,” Bobbie said. “But I’d like to try again, because when it comes down to it, you have always been there for me.”
     Bobbie chastely pulled Laura into her arms, and ran her hand through Laura’s hair, that beautiful blonde hair Bobbie always hated.
     “This is one of the days I love you.”
     Laura smiled. “This is one of the days I love you too.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One not so special day I decided to write this. I was in the shower and this conversation for no reason whatsoever came into my mind and I rushed downstairs to write it down. I have always adored Jackie Zeman and Genie Francis’s chemistry, and Bobbie and Laura are the best friends imaginable when Bobbie cools it with the jealousy. So thank you to all my writing fans who enjoy my writing.