A/N: another song fic. If you haven't listened to Dark Side by Eric Church (not sure you can tell, he's a favorite) go look up the lyrics since the FF police got on me last time ;P

Thanks for informing me of that content guideline.

Anyways. I tried to write a little bit on Second Generation Love, and it came out wretched, so I'm working on getting more for you in the regular fics, just have to find a groove - even my original work is suffering right now.

Happy Reading!

I'd done things I wasn't proud of for my country, and I had done my best to atone for the sins Uncle Sam asked me to perpetrate. It has taken me ten years to come to terms with the things I'd done, and it was all thanks to the love of the woman laying at my side. Some days, though, I wondered how I could have allowed myself to be the husband she needed, when there was an entire part of who I was, who I am, that I have to keep a tight leash on. A side of me that is so dark that it was a natural choice to be tapped for Special Forces, and I had never even be sickened by the things I did until I met her.

I had a great capacity for violence, and an almost spectator viewpoint to torture - as though when I was doing it, I was watching it like a television show, and when I was the subject of it, I was so detached I didn't even feel the pain.

I had a dark side, and I had to keep it leashed tight for the fear that it would tarnish the goodness of the woman I call my wife.

Stephanie is all that is good in this world, although she would disagree. She has an uncanny ability to see the good in people, and to solve mysteries that stump even the greatest minds. Situations that would make a normal person piss their pants, Stephanie faces head on. She has a self-deprecating sense of humor, and she has the mama bear instincts that her mother almost certainly lacked.

When I first met Stephanie, I knew she was great. I knew she was going to change my life, but I had to change some of my own habits first. I quit drinking, because it made the part of me I kept leashed more pronounced. Stephanie doesn't know about that, and I pray she never finds out.

Nowadays it takes a lot to anger me, to get my control to snap. The only sure fired way to get my dark side loose is to threaten or harm my family. I don't mean a little scratch or a schoolyard fight; Stephanie gets plenty of the former and CJ gets into plenty of the latter. No. I mean like this mess I'm looking at right now.

Quentin Ford, a notorious British operative, had taken my son and my wife hostage. My son was bleeding, with a black eye. My wife was tied to a chair, stubborn and pissed and stoic. And Quentin? He was staring right into my eyes while my Glock was pressed tight to his forehead.

"You don't fuck with my family, Quentin. It makes me very angry. I try very hard to keep that locked away."

I waited while Tank took CJ out, and Lester untied Stephanie.

"You've released my dark side. That's a bad, bad thing," I informed him in a completely detached voice, just before I shot him.

"Clean it up," Lester told the back-up team.

He followed me out of the warehouse, and I went right for Stephanie. She was holding CJ, who was for once not struggling. At 7, he was less inclined to hug his mom in public, but not today. I wrapped my arms around them both, and all was right in my world again.