All that usual stuff, I dont own any of these people/places. Does anyone really think I do? :P

Chapter 1

She held her face under the scalding water, as though water hot enough to burn, could clean away more than just the physical dirt and grime of the day. The third lather of soap helped, so did the glass shower walls, so steamed up she couldn't see through them. And for awhile she could just stop, pretend that everything else would stop with her. Lose herself in the heat and the music she'd put on.

The cop half of her could see the freedom that today had bought. A safer town, violent grudges sorted, and the great King turned mad, gone. The cop half of her could count the bodies as a win really.

But for not the first time since she moved to this god forsaken town, the side of her that wasn't a cop, the half of her that was a feeling woman, despite how much she hid it under a badge and holster and loaded gun, was curling and boiling beneath her skin, and couldnt help but see the pain in everything that had happened.

Children without a father, and brothers missing a leader.

And him, missing his mix of brother and son.

Her skin prickled at the thought of him. The memory of his cutting words raising hairs on the back of her neck. She didn't fear him in the way she probably should. Despite his propensity to merciless brutality, she still couldnt imagine him killing her. Especially in this new terrain Jax prepared.

And he's in pain. Probably more pain than she could even imagine, and despite what he said, and who they both are, that cut into her, deeper than his words ever had.

She towelled off her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. The dark bags under her eyes were as prominent as the stark paleness of the rest of her face. Exhustion definitely was catching up with her. She was pulling her hair into an elastic when she heard it. She sudden slam of her front screen door.

Every nerve in her body was acutely alert, and leant down to retrieve her side arm, from the pile of clothes next to the toilet.

The heavy thump of boots entering her bedroom had her fluidly moving into stance, gun up and ready. The footsteps got louder and enrouched on the bathroom door, she held her breath and counted.

The door was hit open with what sounded like a fist and she came face to face with a very drunk and obviously emotionally unstable Chibs Telford.

'Jaysus Christ woman' he yelled at the exact same second she screamed at him

'Are you fucking kidding me? I COULD HAVE SHOT YOU'

Her heart hammered in her chest, she could feel her hands still shaking and the sharp taste of adrenaline in her mouth. She threw the gun to the floor and it was a testament to the shit storm they were living in that she didnt even care she was still naked.

'Do you really think death frightens me now?' He turned and walked back into her room. She moved forward with harsh words to get him out of her house, remind him who had the powers of arrest and her disgust at his actions and words. But they died on her tongue when she stepped into her room and looked at him again. She could se the tear stains and the sway of his stance. But what cracked open her ribs and shook her heart the most was the look in his eyes. The look of someone who had no home to go to. A home that wasnt lost to financial failure or natural disaster. But to their own mistakes. Like someone whose home wasnt a place, but a person. A person who was never going to come back.

'I'm sorry' She whispered instead.

'For the gun and...and for everything else'

He locked eyes with hers, and an almost scared look she never seen in him before, clouded over them.

'I'm sorry I scared yah, I just, I just needed...something'

The dead look in his eyes had returned. And needing something when your world was crumbling around you was something she could relate to, something or anything.

'It's okay. Do you wanna have a smoke?'

'Fuck yes. Any chance of some of the good whisky we opened...last time?'

She nodded, and busied herself finding a lighter to avoid properly acknowledging that that was supposed to be the actual last time.

She heard him banging around in the kitchen and took the moment she had before she joined him, to take a deep breath and steel herself to what was happening. She knew she was supposed to go back to being a cop, and him an outlaw, to cut him out completely. But she hadnt realised until now, just how deep the knife would have to go in order to do it.