A/N and Disclaimer: Hello, there. Boo Boo Cookie is my Empire OTP but sadly I own nothing relating to the Empire television show. If I did, Boo Boo Cookie would be endgame, Lucious would rot in prison, and Anika wouldn't be all on Hakeem's peen. I know the ending to this story but I'm not sure how we're going to get there. Hope you join me for the ride.

-ED

Cookie Lyon was never one to mince her words. Not with the man who she first fell in love with at age 15, not with the women who mistakenly thought she'd be their bitch - cause make no mistake, Cookie Lyon was no one's bitch - not with her own blood relatives. Just about everyone Cookie had ever loved had either loved her and left her, were taken from her, or didn't love her at all. After their daddy left, Candace buried her head so deep down in her books, Cookie thought she wouldn't be able to smell anything other than stale paper and dust for the rest of her life. She knew it was so she wouldn't have to focus on hearing their mama cry night after night about the no-good nigga that left her with 3 girls to raise. Damn her sisters who she would leave to fend for themselves when she went off to Penn State where she would find her rich, white eventual husband. Candace wasn't shit if she could leave her little sisters behind while she was on the come up. Of course, Cookie told her as much when Candace dared to show her face right after their mama died, about 10 years before she went to prison. Carol was still so young, she didn't understand why their older sister didn't come around anymore even though she had the money to. At least she had the decency to send them a few dollars every now and then. There was no invitation to the wedding, just a postcard from St. Lucia stating that she had gotten married and would forward them her new address once she and Randolph had gotten settled. The address only came because Candace wanted to know what was going to happen to the rest of their mother's property following the funeral. Cookie cussed her clean out and promptly told her that she wasn't getting shit and told her to ask her attorney husband about claim to property.

If Cookie thought about it long enough, she probably would've realized her fascination with Lucious when they were younger was connected to her wanting someone who was hers, someone who wouldn't leave her when they went to college or when they decided they didn't want to raise children alone so they decided not to do it at all. If Cookie had a daughter, she'd tell her to keep her pussy, don't give it to these raggedy ass niggas - to get an education or a trade, something that didn't end with a prison sentence. That's not what her mama told her. Shit, her mama didn't tell her anything but to close her damn door. When she told her mama she was pregnant, Cookie's mama told her that she wasn't trying to raise no grandchildren and that she could stay with Lucious since she wanted to go around fucking. Cookie told her mama that she didn't raise the children she had and that she'd be damned if she let her kids anywhere near someone who couldn't let go of a bottle long enough to see that her 15 year old daughter was fucking. Cookie saw her mother a total of 4 times before she passed and received nary an apology for not being able to step out of her grief long enough to parent her children, not even when her mother was on her deathbed.

In the beginning, Cookie saw Lucious as hers. He was just as broken as she was, even if he didn't want to admit it. Sometimes they'd talk about their dreams - him making music, her getting the hell out of Philly. Eventually she fell in love with him and bore him 3 children. She loved Lucious and his dream became her dream. Cookie loved music and knew that Lucious had the talent to make it big. They both dealt drugs but Lucious wanted to focus more on his music so Cookie stepped up and did most of the business. Lucious never liked to think of the negatives so he didn't listen to her when she stated that she felt off about the last deal before she went up. $400,000 and a deal gone bad later and Lucious had his own label while Cookie was serving 30 in prison.

Going to prison was the hardest thing Cookie'd ever had to endure. She was away from her sons - she hadn't even been able to fully wean Hakeem before she started her sentence - and Lucious was acting like he couldn't be bothered to bring their sons to visit their mother. She saw Jamal a few times before the visits stopped. She wanted so badly to be back home with her children. Cookie knew that Lucious wouldn't be able to handle Jamal being gay. She wanted to shield her baby from the pain that his life would eventually bring. Even more so, she wanted to shield him from his father.

The women in prison were hard but Cookie was determined to be harder. "You gon run that pussy for me, bitch" was the first and last time someone attempted to rape Cookie while in prison. Cookie fought with everything she had and her attempted rapist ended up with a broken eye socket and lacerated liver while Cookie ended up with 2 months in the Shu. Once she got out, no one messed with Cookie physically, but that didn't stop the women from commenting once Lucious' star started shining brighter and his visits became far and few in between. Eventually she received the divorce papers in the mail and the comments were deafening. Cookie prayed for death but either God wasn't listening to her or he was too busy with the other women who received their mail and decided that they weren't going to wait on God. They were going to take their lives into their own hands, quite literally. Cookie endured 17 long years out of the 30 she was originally sentenced but she made it out and was determined to have what was rightfully hers returned to her. So when she walked through Empire's doors and into Lucious' office, she thought she'd state her place within the company, make her demands and climb her way to the top of the throne that was rightfully hers.

When she strode into the office, she was hit with the magnitude of Lucious' success which developed while she had been in prison. She gazed at his awards, his records, and paused at the picture of him with his new queen. Anika was a hot little trollop but Cookie paid the photo no mind because she knew if she wanted Lucious back- which she didn't at the time- she could have him. It wasn't until he told her that she couldn't have the A&R position and that she realized the trollop from the photo held the coveted position that she got angry again. Everything she wanted in life had taken from her but it stopped with Empire and it stopped with her children. When Anika walked into Lucious' office, Cookie didn't know what possessed her to call Anika 'Boo Boo Kitty' but she knew it struck a nerve and that's what mattered most at the moment. The bitch had her position, her ex-husband, and Cookie would let Anika know how she felt about it.