She doesn't quite know how she wound up here.

Not here as in location, but here in her life, which is now an endless mess of drunken nights and hungover mornings strung together. The boundaries of day and night blur together, thanks to the vodka that she's become accustomed to and the weed that she now finds as the only thing that will calm her troubled mind. She likes to blame her parents for it, her lovely doting parents that just threw money at her and pretended that it was actually a gesture of affection, instead of the neglect that it really was. Maybe it was the fact that her supposed best friend and her ex-boyfriend were now living happily ever after together, complete with a fairytale wedding that she had avoided like the plague. Maybe it was the fact that she now knew that she would never be able to have the children she once so desired, her body even refusing to give her any happiness at all. Or maybe it was just because this was who she had destined herself to be with the first pull of tequila from a bottle stolen out of her mother's private stock, only at the ripe age of twelve then. Maybe it everything, maybe it was nothing at all.

But somehow, she had wound up here, geographically, at a dingy bar on the outskirts of Oakland, California, bitter with the hand she had been dealt and drunk off her very nice ass.

She had originally been living in Los Angeles, pursuing her very own fashion line. She had made it big, they all said, the next superstar of the fashion world, the prima donna of the ball. Finally she had something that was hers and hers alone, that she could look upon with pride and say, I did this all by myself. Until she allowed her mother into the company out of some sort of nepotism that she still didn't understand, simply craving something from her mother besides crude words and filthy insults. Her mother had finally looked at her with some semblance of love, with something that she had foolishly thought was some kind of faint adoration in her cold eyes. It wasn't, that was clear by the time she turned twenty two and her mother was telling her that she should just hand over things to her, let her run the company. "You're not smart enough for business, Brooke." She had said with the fakest of smiles. "Just draw your pretty little sketches, and I'll do everything else. Isn't that what you really want, sweetheart? To just have fun?"

Oh yes, that was exactly what she had wanted, to be insulted for her past transgressions and the fact that her mind was more geared towards the creative side of things than the business. And so, belittled and verbally bludgeoned by her own mother, she had stepped down as the head of the company and had handed the reins over to her mother, if only to appease her, for a massive golden parachute that would never allow her feet to touch the ground, reducing herself to head designer instead of CEO. Fine, she had thought, one less thing for me to worry about so I can focus on my designs.

Things were good for a few years, until having the business wasn't enough for Victoria anymore. No, she had to have every little piece of Brooke's hapinesss, to suck out all of the joy that had come from having something that she could call her own with her head held high. Her mother had begun to alter the designs, making them cheaper to create and less elegant, more cookie cutter. She had claimed that she was doing it for marketing purposes, for the stockholders, when Brooke had stormed into the offices, what were once hers, which she had once again innocently believed. How young and naïve she had been.

It wasn't until her mother told her that they were selling the company that Brooke realized she had allowed her own company to slip right through her fingers while she wasn't watching closely. Victoria had been embezzling cash from the business, cutting the quality of the materials down off of the book and stuffing her greedy little pockets full of crisp green dollar bills, and had lined up a buy to take what was now a shadow of the company it had once had been for far les than it was worth at the time of sale, just so she could get out quick. "You'll still be a majority stock holder, Brooke. You'll still have a say in what happens to their company."

She had sold all of her stock just two hours later, simply because of the fact that it was now called their company, the business that she had built out of her high school apartment, the company that she had put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into. It made her want to sob and scream at the same time, because it had truly been hers, a piece of her soul that she would never get back.

And so she drowned herself with strong drinks and reprehensible men, ones that she would have never even gone near if she were entirely herself. Men with leery gazes that used to make her skin crawl with disgust, with forceful hands that made her scrub her skin till it was raw the next morning, desperate to rid herself of the shame that was slowly seeping into her bones. And still, after a long day of reminding herself of everything that she had done wrong in her young twenty eight years of life, she slipped back into her old habits and allowed some man that she met in the bar to be drive her back to their hotel and take advantage of her. It was no longer the pretty life being the girl behind the red door, but the jaded wanderings of a lost cause. Yes, she had more money that she could ever want or deserve, but without a sense of even remotely knowing who she was anymore, there was no purpose. Brooke Davis is no longer the peppy, perky girl that she once had been. She's harder now than she had been before, cold and lifeless. She had been spiraling out of control, and there hadn't a soul in the world that could stop her.

And so she tilts back a shot of tequila at the dingy bar with the shady folk, trying to find some sort of middle ground where she can say, "okay, this is where I belong". Every bar she walks into is the same: dimly lit, faint music playing in the background, cheap drinks, and a pool table or two in the back But none feel like the Blue Post, the bar she had frequented when she had lived in Tree Hill. None have the sensation that she belongs there. But then again, she doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere anymore, like she's just fated to ramble along for the rest of her life, casually spending money here there until the well finally taps dry. She lives for that day, wondering what the beautiful Brooke Davis will be like without the piles of money to comfort her at night. Will she sleep with these disgusting men for money, then? Allow herself to completely circle the drain while on bended knees? She smirks at the thought, her own cynical voice popping into her head. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

But at least she has someone beside her, looking over at the redhead that was allowing herself to be felt up by some frat boy with a Backstreet Boy haircut. He was probably nineteen, maybe even twenty; Rachel had always like her meat young and fresh. She had fallen out of the shell game of life a year or two before Brooke, drowning herself in crank instead of alcohol after Victoria had fired her for showing up late for modeling shoots. Brooke had found her in her old apartment in Greenwich Village, half dead from a bad batch that was running through her veins. She wasn't such a fucking mess back then, she could actually take care of people, and so she got Rachel off of the needle and up on her feet. From the day she had stepped out of rehab, she hadn't left Brooke's side. Sure, they took off at the end of the night in opposite directions with their own men to forget about their problems, but they always circled back to each other the next morning. Rachel was the only constant in her life anymore.

Raye finally saunters over, a wily grin on her lips. "So I'm gonna take off with College Boy over there, cause apparently he's got an older woman complex. Some sort of abusive mother thing? Whatever it is, I'm diggin' it."

Brooke rolls her eyes, taking another shot as she rolls her head back against her shoulders.

"Don't wait up." She says with a wink and a pinch.

Brooke laughs, shaking her head. She never does. Rachel had always had a thing for playing with her meat before she devoured it whole. Some sort of carnivore thing, maybe.

She doesn't pay any mind to anyone around her until she knocks back a few more shot, till the room starts spinning and she's got some sort of hazy half moon smile on her lips. Her hazel eyes go cloudy and for the first time that day she feels better then when she got out of bed, her limbs feeling light and her morals loose. It's right about then that she feels the hot breath of a stranger on her neck, a feeling that's become more and more familiar with as the time passes.

"Why hello there, baby girl." The man says with a sleazy grin, his open palm creeping up her bare back, all the way up under her shirt to where her bra rests.

Part of her wants to vomit right then and there, but she pushes that aside and blames it on the alcohol, smiling sloppily back at him. "Hiya back." Brooke giggles out.

She lets him lead her out of the bar, the smile still on his lips as Brooke stumbles her way out of the bar, tripping over her own feet. She can barely see straight, but the giggles are still pouring from her lips as he pulls her towards his truck.

Sleazeball looks back at her over his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear. "C'mon, pretty girl, let's go have some fun."

Her stomach lurches up into her throat, and her hazel eyes go wide.

Pretty girl.

Brooke stops in her tracks right then and there, tears forming as she pulls her arm back from him. "No." She says with new found strength, shaking her head. This is too much for her, too much to feel when she's just trying to be fucking numb tonight.

He looks like Lucas, at this moment. Then again everybody looks like Lucas when she's this drunk, when she just wants to be curled up in her broody boy's arms and forget about everything that's happened. But she knows she can't, because he's married to Peyton and she's too wrecked for him to want her anyway.

She shakes her head, as if to reset the etcha-sketch of her mind, and when she blinks, it's him again, but him looks a lot angrier than he was a few seconds before.

"I said, c'mon!" Sleazebag snarls at her, his hands yanking her forward and into his chest. "Show a guy a good time, sweetheart, and I won't hurt that nice face of yours."

Brooke spits in his face, her eyes wild with hate. "Fuck you, you son of a bi-"

Crack.

She can't even get the words out as the stranger's fist collides with the side of her face, knocking her onto the pavement. But it feels like it's into it, that's how hard he hits her. Brooke had never been smacked around before, not since her dad had slapped her around when she was a teen, and it was never with malice. But somehow, she knows what comes next in this awful scenario, unable to fight back.

"Nobody talks to me this way, you stupid whore." He hisses from above, picking her up as she groans.

He leans her against the car, and he has to hold her up by the front of her shirt just to get her to stand straight. She's so weak, that when the second punch collides with her cheek she can't even feel the snap of her eye socket breaking. With the third punch, which hits her directly in the stomach, her body collapses to the ground with a resounding thud, and when his foot collides with her chest, her eyes slip shut. She can feel the kicks and the stomps, and soon her body stops feeling everything.

"Is this it?", she thinks to herself as she feels the tears seep from her eyes. "Is this the end of it all?"

Between the gore of his blows and the blood that stains her lips, Brooke Davis smiles at the thought of dying, and just lets go.

- x – x – x – x – x – x –

He doesn't quite know how he wound up here.

Not geographically here, but just here, caught between his club and his boys. His before and after are beginning to blur together, and he's losing details of before every day. That's what he calls it in his journal now, when he talks about Tara dying. He just calls it before and tries to forget that he found his wife stabbed in the back of the neck with a meat fork, and calls what happens now after. He doesn't want his boys to read about their mother, not after everything that they've already been through. He can only imagine what the day he tells his boys that their mother was murdered in the kitchen that they sit and eat their breakfast in every morning, the looks of betrayal and disgust that will grace their little faces. Sure, Abel understands that his mommy is in heaven, but the gravity of her death still hasn't hit him yet. It's too much to understand, and that's perfectly fine with Jax. He'll wait as long as they need, till they come asking to know the truth. He can wait forever.

He had begun his path on the righteous course, trying to get the club out of the illegal activities that had become entwined with the core of who they were. He had just wanted to get out, to be a good father and a good husband, to live a normal life where his family wasn't in constant fear that he was going to get locked up at any second. But SAMCRO had pulled him back in, reeled him in like a fish hooked on a line, like some sort of bad religion that he clung to with all the faith in the world. And so, they had stayed. They had tried to make it all work, and for a while, it was okay.

But it seems like everything had really just gone to shit after Tara went inside, when she had finally gone somewhere that could make her pull far enough away from him, just far enough away that Jax was ready to just let go. And so he had found shelter in Collette, a woman that didn't require anything from him, that wasn't a daily reminder of all that he had put her through. There was so much that Tara had sacrificed for their life, that by the end of it there was nothing left for her and nothing that he could give her to make it better. At the end, she had just wanted their boys to have more options in life than becoming an outlaw. And he had been ready, ready to let them go and give them a better life, right up until he'd found her blood and cold as ice, with a dead cop right beside her.

And so Jax had been the man that he had once been determined not to be, and had gone to lock up angry and riddled with all of his past sins. It wasn't like he didn't deserve the suspicion that he had killed Tara and Roosevelt. He had killed countless men, brutally and maliciously, but it was the one time that he actually hadn't done the crime that he was in jail for. He'd darkly laughed about it in his cell for those two long weeks that he'd spent in Stockton, until they let the beast out of the cage, sending him running back into his already bloodied fighting ring.

There had been a time once where Jax hadn't allowed hate to rule his actions, when he had put his love for his family and his club before burning everything around him to the ground. He hadn't retaliated – very much, at least – when they had killed Tig in prison. He had been thankful, as Tig had been the person responsible for all of the wreckage that had occurred after Veronica Pope's death, one woman changing the fate of their club forever. If he hadn't been so reckless, they might not have even been in the mess that they had been thrust into while they were in Stockton. Jax and Clay had started the lie that would spur on Tig's foolish actions against the Niner's, yes. But it was Tig who had made his own grave, as well as the one that the charred body of his daughter was buried in.

So now he rides, rides endless and endless miles with Opie at his left hand and Chibs on his right. He had forgotten what it had felt like to just let his headers drown out all of the sounds, for the world around him to become paper cutouts along the way, for his body and his bike to become one with the pavement. It's the only feeling that keeps Jax breathing anymore, aside for revenge. He needs it, craves the feelings that will rush through him when he finally kills Tara's murderer. He's abandoned his young boys to find it, leaving them in Gemma and Wendy's care, and he's sure it's a decision he'll regret for the rest of his life, but it's the only one he feels he can choose. Anything else would just make him miss Tara even more.

They had decided to take a ride up to Oakland to visit Damon Pope, the black godfather of the inner city, and ask him some questions about Tara. Opie felt with an undeniable certainty that he was involved, and Jax had just gone along with it because it was another long ride through the night air. Chibs had driven the club's truck, just in case they needed to move a few bodies, and Opie and Jax had ridden out on their bikes. The meeting had been unsuccessful, with no appearance that black had been the ones to hurt Tara and no word from Pope on who had been involved, but the long miles from Charming had filled him up and made him feel like he could breathe easy, if only for a second or two.

It had been Chibs who had asked to stop for a beer on the way back, if only so he could use the john. Opie had gone in to grab them a few bottles of beer, and Jax had decided to stay outside. It's gorgeous out, the midnight winds just beginning to pick up, brushing away all of the bad thoughts that are entering his head. Had Pope killed Tara as some sort of retaliation? Or was it Lin, as Gemma claimed? Alvarez, maybe? His mind is an endless line of thrashing suspicions and lies, all pumped into him by the very woman who birthed him, and Jax can't even stop them anymore. He doesn't have the strength to.

He goes around the side of the building to have a smoke, pulling out his cigarettes and lighting up. He's trying to avoid the skanks that gather outside of the front, having no desire for women anymore. All Jax sees is Tara. In his dreams, in his house, in his fucking head. Her memory throttles him every second of his day, as if she's coming back from the grave to keep him from being with anyone else. He had loved her so fiercely, so deeply, and now she's just gone, leaving a massive hole in his life where she had been.

He tips his head back as the sweet scent of tobacco fills his senses, and he's so buzzed that he nearly trips over a rock on the ground. "Fuck." He mutters, shaking his head. Jax looks down, about to kick it out of the way in anger, when he notices his shoes feel damp.

Blood, and a fucking lot of it, covers his white Nikes head to toe. There's puddles of it all down the alley, like someone dragged a body nice and slow over the gravel. His curiosity gets the better of him, following it all the way down the path and into the back parking lot.

And that's when he sees her, and before he can even think he's fucking running towards her as fast as he can.

Tara.

She looks like her, splayed across the asphalt like a broken angel. The blackish blood that pools around her head is a dark halo, the very blood that clings to the fabric of his jeans as he reaches her, kneeling right beside her as he feels for some sort of pulse, grabbing at her already bruised neck as helpless as a child.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

He can feel her heart pulsating against her fingertips, and he starts yelling blood murder. "OPIE, GET THE FUCK OUT HERE!" Jax bellows, his hands cradling the poor woman's head as he tries to figure out what to do.

"Tara would have known", his mind whispers to him, "she would have known how to save her, but you let her fucking die, Jackson. All she wanted to do was love you, and you let someone fucking murder her."

They're running out of the bar, Opie and Chibs. He can just barely see them coming up the alley as he tries to pull her limp body into his arms, blood slathering his shirt and cut in a bath of red. Jax can't even think straight with the voices in his head and the woman in his arms moaning in pain. Her face is a fucking mess, her entire body a chaotic war of bruises and gashes and broken bones, and all he can do is hoist her up into his burly arms as the guys run up to him.

"Jesus Chris, Jackie boy." Chibs manages to get out, his eyes filled with horror as he surveys her. "What happened?"
"Get the truck open, now!" He yells as he staggers up the alley and to the truck. His troubled gait isn't because of the feather light woman in his arms, but because he can see Tara now, laying on the kitchen floor in a mess of her own blood with a few gaping holes in her skull. Jax feels the hate slipping in, clinging to him, sucking every ounce of strength that he's got left as Opie opens up the back door of the truck.

"Jax, what the fuck did you do?" Opie manages to get out as Jax hoists her body – because she's that far gone, that she's almost a goddamn corpse – into the back of the truck with him and lays her down on the backseat, her head in his lap as Op shuts the door behind him.

"I fucking found her like this, all beat up and shit. " Jax grunts out as Opie gets into the front seat. "Just fucking drive, Op."

He doesn't care about his bike being left here as they start the truck up and roar out of the parking lot. "Get to the clubhouse as fast as you can, Chibs can patch her up as best as he can."

Opie's yelling at him from the front seat, telling him that they have to take her to the emergency room, that the club doesn't need this heat right now, that Chibs can't handle it, and he just fucking explodes.

"Then I'll hire a fucking doctor to do whatever they need to do, but I'm not fucking leaving her!" He yells at the top of his lungs, tears filling his eyes. "I'm not letting another one die on me!"

It's an unspoken understanding between the two of them, two widowers, that saving her is some sort of penance for both being unable to save their own wives from the wreckage that was the club. Opie races to the club as fast as he can on four wheels, Chibs going even faster in front of them, and Jax just sits in the back seat holding her, brushing away the blood matted hair from her broken face.

"Are you gonna let this one die too, Jackson? Like you did Tara?" The voice in his head hisses.

Jax looks down at her, shaking his head, his words as silent as can be.

"Not this time."