It had grown colder. Even pulling his leather jacket up higher around his collar, he could feel the bitter snap of the cold as he sat on the cement bench, the silence around him deafening in its totality.

He’d lost track of time literally. He had no clue if hours or minutes were passing by as he sat, the rain alternating between a gentle rainfall and a harsh downpour. It would worry him, except that he no longer cared about such mundane things as time and marking it.

How could he care about anything when his world was laid to waste around him? Destroyed by the power of one single sentence, one single revelation.

His father was not his father. His father was a man named Luke Spencer who had raped his mother.

He was the product of rape, a permanent reminder of a brutal attack.

How could his mother love him? How could his father, how could Scott Baldwin, stand to look at him? How could anyone know the truth of his heritage and look at him twice?

How could he look at himself in the mirror?

Nick shuddered violently. He hadn’t always gotten along with his parents. There’d been some rip roaring fights along the way as he moved through his teenage years. He’d known that there were times when his father, when Scott Baldwin, hadn’t always understood him. Or sometimes even wanted to. But he had always known that he had his father’s, Scott’s, love and respect. Always.

Now he was left to wonder, how much of that had been a lie? How could Scott love him? Every time they looked at him it must have hurt them like hell. I wonder if I look anything like him? Do they look in my eyes and see him? Does she?

“Hey Baldwin.”

Nick looked up when he heard a voice call his name, relaxing only when he recognized the the tall male with the dark long hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Stone.” Nick tried to keep his voice casual, his emotional state hidden.

“I thought you were going to help me rebuild that carburetor.” Stone looked around the empty park. “Of course if you’d rather hang out here in some twisted version of Singing In The Rain, I’m off to the relative warmth of the garage.” He paused to take a closer look at Nick. “You okay man? You look like something no cat would lower itself to drag in.”

Nick almost smiled. As much as his mother worried about Stone’s negative influence on him, he found the older boy easy to hang around. “Just having a bad hair day, I guess.” Nick said with what he hoped was relative ease.

Stone grinned. “With you Baldwin, it’s more like a bad hair life.” His eyes narrowed as the other youth didn’t even attempt a smile. “Hey it was a bad joke and all that, but it wasn’t that bad.” When this comment was met with silence, Stone made up his mind. “Look. The carb can wait till another day. I’m probably just going to put a new one in anyway. Why don’t you and I head to Kelly’s for a late lunch? I’d tell you its my treat but Caroline’s working the counter today so it’s a moot point. What do you say? Free chili and a place to hang for a while. You can’t turn that down.”

Nick paused. The last place he wanted to go was Kelly’s. The last person he wanted to see was Caroline Spencer. His cousin. Jesus HIS COUSIN. He shook his head at yet another argument that his world was not what he thought it was.

Still...if he wanted to know more about Luke Spencer there was no better place to start....

He found himself nodding and stepping into place next to Stone.

The Docks

Emily Quartermaine leaned against her boyfriend as they sat on the bench. “You okay?” she whispered softly, watching the way their fingers interlocked.

Tanner Baldwin breathed deeply. “I’m better.” The words were soft and his touch softer still. “I don’t think I’m anywhere near okay yet.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Emily asked quietly. He had said very little since they had left his house. Whatever went on inside the Baldwin home earlier today it had to have been pretty bad for Tanner to hurt like this.

Tanner shook his head. “Not yet.” He took another deep breath, trying to keep himself grounded. “I should take you home. Your folks are going to freak out enough at my keeping you out in the rain like this.”

“I don’t want to leave you.” She protested her grip on his hand tightening. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew without being told that the world they lived in, the world she depended on, was about to change in basic fundamental ways that scared her. She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want to lose them.

“You don’t. Ever. I can always feel you with me, you know.” He pulled her to her feet. “But I need to find Nick.” Somewhere in the last five minutes of contemplation it occurred to him that as badly as he was hurting Nick had to be hurting a hundred times worse. He had to see Nick. He had to convince him that nothing had changed between them. As far as he was concerned Nick was his brother and that was all that mattered.

Emily nodded. “All right. Just remember that I love you, okay?”

Tanner gently kissed her. “I never forget that, not even for a second.”

“Tanner!” The excited and youthful cry made them turn to see a jubilant, albeit slightly muddy, McKenzie bearing down on them. Her blue eyes shining.

“We won. We won.” She exclaimed as she leaped into her brother’s arms. “And I scored a goal.”

Tanner laughed as he spun her around. Oh God what would happen to her when she knew the truth? He swallowed hard. “That’s great squirt.”

“Yeah, but I scored the winning goal,” Maxie Jones stared at her best friend pointedly, before smiling at Tanner and Emily. “Although McKenzie did give me the assist.”

“The team won.” A slightly exasperated voice said from behind the girls as Lucas caught up with them. “What does it matter who scored what goal?”

Emily hid a smile as McKenzie pulled slightly away from her brother and stood a little taller. “You’re absolutely right, Lucas. Soccer is a team sport and the whole team won.”

The effect of the mature voice and words was destroyed when McKenzie stuck her tongue out at Maxie after the other girl muttered “suck up” under her breath.

McKenzie turned her attention back to her older brother. “Where did you guys go anyway? First Nick took off and then you two left. What’s the point of scoring a goal when there’s no one around to cheer you on?”

“I thought soccer was a “team” effort,” Maxie said. McKenzie ignored her best friend’s jibe.

“Is anything wrong?”

Emily glanced at Tanner and noticing his hesitation, she shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong silly. I just wanted some private time with your big brother. I hope you don’t mind.”

McKenzie looked at her doubtfully and then shook her head. Having met some of the girls her other friends brother’s dated, McKenzie had long ago decided that Emily was more than just okay. Emily didn’t mind if she tagged along on her and Tanner’s dates. Emily gave her tips on make up and stuff. (Not that her mother let her wear that stuff outside of the bathroom.) And best of all, Emily lived in a mansion that came complete with a pool and stables.

All in all, McKenzie had long ago decided that if Tanner was stupid enough to break up with Emily she’d disown him.

So instead of being mad, McKenzie simply nodded.

Emily looked around. “You guys come down here on your own?”

“I wish.” A quiet voice muttered as a petite young woman with long dark brown hair and huge dark eyes joined them. “No such luck. Mom and Dad set me on munchkin detail.” Robin Scorpio said with a smile. “Hey Em. Long time no see. How’s Jason?”

Emily smiled, Robin Scorpio had had a crush on her big brother since high school and Jason had yet to notice. Personally, Emily thought Robin could do better, since Jason was nice in a big brother kind of way but somewhat bland in her opinion. She shrugged. “Busy with his premed studies I think. Our paths don’t cross as much as they used to since he started working as an orderly at the hospital.”

“Tell him I said hi,” Robin began and then stopped as the rain began to fall again. “I guess this means no victory sno-cones for you today guys. I think I should take you all back to the brownstone.”

As the three kids gave off a resounding chorus of “do we have to’s” Emily met Tanner’s gaze with a smile, as the both remembered sharing many a sno-cone on the docks when they were Maxie and McKenzie’s age.

“Okay. Okay.” Robin gave in to the pleas of her cousin and half-brother. “Since sno-cones are out, what about cheese fries at Kelly’s instead?” As the kids let out their pleasure in their usual loud and boisterous manner, Robin turned to Emily and Tanner. “You two want to join us? Dad gave me forty bucks for keeping the munchkins out of the house so he and Mom could enjoy his first day off in two weeks, so anything you want is on me.”

Tanner hesitated for a minute leery of anything connected to the name Spencer at the moment but then caught the shining gaze of his sister as she tried not to get caught staring at Lucas, the silent plea in them undid him. He nodded. . “Just for a little while.”

Holding Emily’s hand, Tanner followed his sister’s entourage across the docks to Kelly’s.

Kelly’s

Caroline Spencer groaned as the plate she had so carefully balanced on top of a pile of five others tottered and then careened downward to hit the floor with a crash. Great. Another broken dish. She could already feel a lecture from her mother coming on. Picking up the dustpan from behind the counter, she disposed of the evidence quickly and vowed never to confess her misdeeds to anyone.

At 19, Caroline had graduated from high school (barely) a year before Nick. In the year and a half since her release from that hellhole of an institution, Caroline had spent most of her time hanging out with her boyfriend Stone Cates and, when she couldn’t weasel her way out of it, helping out at Kelly’s. It wasn’t a bad life, even if she got into more trouble than she could sometimes talk her way out of. She sighed. Lately she had become bored and despite her best efforts at entertaining herself, shoplifting at the mall or sex with Stone in her room, she couldn’t shake the feeling of rootlessness that filled her. Sometimes she looked around her and she knew that there was more to life, or at least more to her life, than a two bit diner that barely made enough for her and her mother to scrape by.

She shrugged as she turned up the radio and began to wipe the counter. How many times had she dreamed of more as a kid growing up? She’d seen them all come in here- the Scorpios, the Quartermaines, the Baldwins. All of Port Charles upper class. They’d come in and pretend to engage her mother in small talk. Maybe one of them, most likely that Monica Quartermaine, would talk about the old days when her mother was a student nurse at GH, before she became pregnant with Caroline and had to drop out. Caroline found them so condescending she had to fight not to gag at times. But God her mother, her pathetic and much loved mother, would lap up their attention before going back to her dull and dingy life.

Caroline had sworn to herself that someday she would move in that world.

“Daydreaming again sweet Caroline?” A voice mocked behind her as Sly came down the stairs. “You wouldn’t want Aunt Bobbie to know that you were slacking off the minute she left town, would you?” Sly grinned as he picked up an apple from a basket on the counter.

“I should charge you for that Eckert, “ Caroline growled.

“You can’t. I’m family. And you know how Aunt Bobbie feels about family.”

Caroline knew. She’d heard the lecture over and over when she’d protested her mother bringing Sly to live with them when they were barely making it with the two of them. She’d made the same protest when her mother told her about her Uncle Luke coming to stay with them after he got out. Fat lot of good it did her. The mysterious, god-like Luke Spencer was in and their last boarder was out.

Not that Caroline had liked Mr. Alexander, but at least he had paid his rent on time. With their luck, her vaunted Uncle Luke would be every bit the free loader she was afraid he would be. She scowled.

“Don’t frown Caroline.” Sly remarked as he headed out the back door. “You’ll destroy your looks and we all know that there all you have.”

Caroline watched him go. “Not quite, Sly Eckert. Not by a long shot.”

She shifted her attention away from Sly and towards the front door when she heard the chime as it opened. “What can I get you?” she began and then stopped.

“Oh it’s you.”

“Now is that anyway to greet your Prince Charming,” Stone protested as he kissed Caroline forcefully. “And we all know that I’m your Prince Charming, don’t we?”

Caroline pushed him away half-heartedly. “Get a limo and half a million in your bank account and you can be whoever you want to be.” Despite her caustic words, she moved back into his arms. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

“I decided that the car could wait, but introducing my friend Nick here to the pleasure of your Aunt Ruby’s famous chili, God Bless Her Soul, could not.”

Caroline turned to the silent young man at her boyfriend’s side. She knew Nick through Stone but that was about it. “Nick.” She tried to sound casual but something about the intensity of his gaze on her disturbed her.

Nick found his heart beating faster as he stared at her. This was his cousin. He wasn’t sure if the thought made him sick or just shocked. Was there a resemblance...maybe in the arch of their eyebrows..or the shape of their eyes...or maybe...

“Baldwin. Hey Baldwin.”

Nick shook his head and forced himself to pay attention to his surroundings.

“Jesus man you really are out of it,” Stone complained.

“Sorry,” Nick tried to shrug it off. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“It must be girl trouble,” Caroline teased. “Tell me her name and maybe I can help...”

“I...” Nick stammered at a loss for words.

“Leave him alone Caro,” Stone commanded his girlfriend. “Where’s your mother today anyway?”

“She’s up at Statesville for a few days. My Uncle Luke gets out soon....”

“What? He’s getting out?” The words were dragged out of Nick almost involuntarily and Caroline stared at him suspiciously.

“Yeah. How do you know my Uncle Luke?”

Before Nick can answer he hears a voice calling his name and turns to see his little sister surrounded by people walking in through the door.

His heart falling, his eyes meet Tanner’s across the room and Nick closes his eyes in agony as he realizes that his little brother knows the truth.

Knows that he is the son of a monster.

A monster that would be returning to Port Charles in just a few days.