Yes, I was gone for a while, but I'm sort-of back. See my profile for further details on that. This one-shot is based in the AU described in my story Fallen, so I would strongly recommend you read that one first.

WARNINGS for mentions of child sexual abuse.

She was thin, unnaturally so, and it made her dry, weather-worn skin hang off her bones. Her cheekbones were too prominent and her eyes sunken far into her sockets as she surveyed the club. It was early still, barely 8:00 p.m., so the place was practically empty with only a few people here and there. When she moved through the crowd, the scent of cigarettes and a cheap musky perfume followed her, and as she sat at the bar on the right side of the room, tremors ran through her whole body. She ordered a cranberry juice, paid with cash and turned her head from one side to the other, her eyes darting around, looking for someone or something. It was obvious that she didn't belong there.

Cassidy was working the bar that night. She was 24 and had never been one of Haven's resident's, but still considered Haven and Mother Night to be her saving grace. Heroin had sent her to the streets when she was a teen, pregnancy had driven her to get clean and Mother Night and the child care up in Haven had given her a way out of prostitution. She yanked the ponytail holder from her hair, which was doing its best to break free, gathered it again and tucked it in the holder, all while eying the older woman at the bar.

She looked like a hard 55, but she was probably closer to 40. Cassidy had been on the streets long enough to recognize the signs of premature aging due to drugs and booze. "Are you looking for someone?" she finally asked.

The woman started, tucking her stringy brown hair behind her left ear. "I was told Wendy Marron worked here?"

"Maybe, depends on who wants to know." It sounded a little gangster movie for her taste, but everyone in the building was weary of strangers wandering in and asking about any of them.

The woman sipped her juice, looking away briefly before turning back. "I heard she manages this place, is that true?"

"If you tell me who you are or why you care, I might be able to answer your questions."

Again the woman focused on her juice, this time for at least five minutes, her whole body twitching and jumping as she struggled to keep still. She was definitely still working something out of her system, though to be as calm as she was, she must have already been clean for a few weeks at least. The woman ran her left index finger down the side of the glass, before speaking, her eyes on the bar instead of Cassidy. "I'm her mother."

Cassidy did not speak, she didn't even move. She'd never heard Wendy mention her birth mother, not once. "Give me a minute," she said, before stepping away to text on her phone.

Emily was in her office, going over paperwork for the clubs and Haven when her phone trilled. It was a text from Cassidy and she tried not to groan; the kids were big fans of texting, but Emily kind of loathed it. As soon as she read it, all other thoughts flew clear out of her mind. Wendy's mother was here? What the hell could she possibly want?

She abandoned her paperwork and her office and headed for Mother Night, pushing through the door between the public and private areas with more force than she normally exercised. When she got to the inside door to Mother Night, she took three deep breaths to keep herself calm, before turning the knob and entering the club. It didn't take her long to find the woman she was looking for, everyone else was much too young and far less hammered by life. She walked up to the brunette and held out a hand. "Emily Berne. You're Wendy's mother?"

The other woman hesitated, but extended one shaky, bone-thin hand. "Bonnie Marron, and yes, I am. Who are you?"

"I own this club. Wendy hasn't heard from you in over a decade, why are you here?"

Bonnie didn't bristle at Emily's almost accusatory tone. "I finally got clean, almost two months now. Wasn't even sure Wendy was alive until a girl at AA said she worked here."

"Heroin?" Emily asked, surveying the woman. Bonnie nodded in response. Emily slid into the seat next to her. "That's quite an accomplishment, to get clean after using for over a decade."

"When you hit rock bottom, your only option is to go up. Or die." She snorted. "Still can't decide if it's a miracle or some sick joke that I didn't die years ago."

Emily did not respond, she was undecided on that matter herself. "So, you're here to reconnect with Wendy?"

Bonnie sipped her cranberry juice. "Step 9, make amends, though that girl deserves a hell of a lot more than an apology."

"But that's what you're here for, to make amends?"

"To try, if she'll talk to me."

Emily bit her lip. "You aren't here to ask for money or a place to stay or anything like that?"

Bonnie shook her head. "I can't imagine she'd give me anything if I had the nerve to ask."

"Okay, Wendy won't be around until tomorrow evening, you can come back then, same time. I'll tell her that you were here and if she wants to see you, she'll be here."

The other woman threw back the rest of her juice, before setting the glass on the counter. "You get this involved in all your employees lives?"

She smirked. "Yeah, most of them."

Wendy hadn't felt so nervous sitting in Mother Night in years, not since the first day she was officially the manager of the place. Then she'd been terrified, absolutely petrified that she'd screw-up and disappoint Emily. And she'd messed up a few times, but Emily had never seemed bothered or disappointed. Her adoptive mother had never been anything but supportive, including when it came to meeting her birth mother, whom she hadn't seen in well over a decade. Wendy wasn't even sure why she agreed to meet with the woman. Bonnie Marron had never done anything good for her.

"Wendy?" She jumped in her seat and turned to see an older woman eying her. There was something familiar about her, but Wendy honestly couldn't have said that she recognized her. "Bonnie?"

She nodded and Wendy gestured her to sit at the small, round table pushed against a wall. "How did you know I was me?"

"You're the only person here who looks like she'd rather be anywhere else."

Wendy looked down at the table. "I guess that's not entirely untrue."

"Thank you for meeting me. And thank your boss for me, she seems like a nice woman," Bonnie said, already fidgeting in her seat, but then so was Wendy.

"My boss?"

"Yes, I spoke to her last night, uh Emily?"

"Oh, right. I guess I don't really think of her as my boss."

Bonnie's eyebrows crawled up her forehead. "Really? Then what do you think of her as?"

"My mother."

The older woman leaned back abruptly and her face lost the small amount of color it had had, but only for seconds. "I didn't know you were so close, she never mentioned..."

"She probably didn't want to make you uncomfortable." Wendy pressed her lips together and tried to swallow the hostile feelings creeping up. "So, you got clean?"

"Yes, two months on Thursday." She smiled, her back straightening with pride.

Wendy smiled back. "That's wonderful, really. What made you quit?"

"A friend OD'd in my arms, I guess it was pretty sobering."

"I'm sorry for your loss." Though all Wendy could think was that watching another junkie die had sobered her, but watching grown men rape her ten year-old daughter hadn't?

"Thank you...so how long have you worked here? You seem a little young to be a manager."

She could feel the tension twisting her body, pulling her arms closer to her chest. "Pretty much since I turned 21. But I've been helping out with both clubs since I was sixteen, doing inventory, ordering, keeping the books, that sort of thing. Mom keeps telling me that I can do better, but I guess I just like it here."

Bonnie's thin frame pulled in on itself at the mention of "Mom," but Wendy didn't apologize. "I'm sure she's right," the older woman said, forcing a smile. "How did you meet Emily?"

"Uh, after I left that pit we were living in, I lived on the street for a little while. One day I was standing on the street, waiting for a guy to pick me up and there was an older girl working the same area, Angie. She asked me what the hell I was doing, told me I was way too young to be working the streets, and then dragged me by the hand to this place. She asked for Emily at the door and Abby led us to the back, the part closed to the public. Mom was there. I spit in her face and told her to piss off. She offered to help me get back home, but then I told her I'd be doing the same thing at home as I was on the streets, so she took me in herself."

"Why didn't she call child services?"

"She knew I would have run away. Actually she told me a few years ago that she'd planned to call them and have me placed with a good family after she'd worked with me for a while and got me to the point where I wouldn't run away."

"She changed her mind, then?"

"No, she said she woke up one day and couldn't bear the thought of me leaving. Mom told me that was the day I became her little girl." Emily had told her that the day she'd graduated high school.

"She doesn't seem much older than you," Bonnie said, her body winding tighter.

Wendy nodded. "She's not. I think she was around my age now, when I met her. But that didn't matter to her and it doesn't matter to me."

Bonnie sighed. "I know I wasn't the best mother, Wendy-"

"Not the best? You weren't a good mother; hell, you weren't even a decent one. I was an afterthought to you, every day I was alive, until you realized you could make drug money off me."

"I was addicted to heroin for almost your entire life, Wendy. I didn't know how to be a decent mother, all I knew was how to get from one fix to the next."

"Why didn't you dump me at a church or hospital or something, and let them take me into foster care?"

"Because you were my kid, I was responsible for you," she said, digging in her purse for something.

"But you weren't responsible for me. You ignored me, you barely fed me, I barely had clothing-"

"Look-" Bonnie interrupted, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and yanking one out.

"You can't smoke in here," Wendy interrupted her, voice loud and demanding.

Bonnie held up one shaky hand and then stashed the cigarettes back in her purse, and instead she pulled out a hard candy, popping it into her mouth, before grabbing another and offering it to Wendy. "No, thanks."

It was a butterscotch, the same candy Bonnie carried around when Wendy was a kid. There were many days where all Wendy ate were butterscotch candies. She hated butterscotch.

"Look Wendy, I know I didn't give you much when you were a kid, but I didn't have much to give. Not like Emily here-"

"You think that's what made her a good mother? Giving me clothes and three square meals?"

"Well, I'm sure she gave you toys and you know all that other stuff too," Bonnie said, waving a hand.

"I imagine she would have if she could have. I wore a lot of hand me downs and I didn't have much to play with, Emily couldn't afford that much. She had to build this place from scratch and when I showed up, she had only been at it for a year or two. So no, that's not why she was a good mother." Wendy paused, trying again to push down her hostility, so she didn't end up shouting. "That day on the street with Angie, I was so pissed when she dragged me here, because I'd been hoping that the next guy to pick me up would kill me. I already felt dead, so I figured it wouldn't be much of a change to actually be dead. But Emily made me a deal, she asked me to stay a week, and if I still wanted to leave when it was over, she wouldn't stop me. That first night, I woke up crying hysterically over a nightmare about the men who'd paid you to rape me. Mom came racing into the room, pulled me into her arms, even as I fought and screamed and threw every bad name and curse word at her that I could think of. She rocked me back and forth and promised me that I was safe, swore to me that she would never let anyone touch me again. We spent the next five nights the same way, and I knew she had to be tired, I kept waiting for her to yell at me or to just ignore me one night, but she never did. At the end of that week, I said I wanted to stay, because I realized that maybe, being alive wasn't such a horrible thing."

Bonnie didn't speak for several minutes, but her fingers twisted the loose cigarette that didn't make it back into her purse. "I'm sorry for what I did to you, Wendy, what I let those men do to you-"

"Let them do? You encouraged them, you took their money, you even took higher payments in exchange for not having to use a condom. Emily had to take me to get tested for HIV and STDs when I was barely 12! You yelled at me to stop crying, told me to be a good girl and open my mouth so the nice man could put his penis inside, you touched me yourself to get them more excited."

"I'm trying to apologize here, Wendy."

"Then try being honest!"

"Fine, I'm sorry for what I did to you and for what I made you do. I'm sorry that I wasn't a better mother and that I stole your childhood from you. I was using and though that's no excuse, it does mean that I let the drugs control me. I let them own me and destroy me and destroy you in the process." Bonnie inhaled. "I would like it if we could start over, if I could be part of your life again."

"I appreciate your apology, and I'm glad you're clean now. Everyone deserves a second chance and I'm happy that you're getting yours. But I'd prefer not to be involved, and not to see you again." She moved to get up from the table, but Bonnie grabbed her arm.

"Wendy, please, I know I hurt you and I'm sorry for that, but give me a chance to prove that I'm better, that I can be better."

"Let go of me now," Wendy snarled at her.

Bonnie quickly released her. "I just want to know my little girl again."

Her voice cracked when she spoke. "I'm not your little girl, and I don't want to know you."

Wendy then charged out of Mother Night, racing down the hallway and through the door to the private sections of the building, straight to Emily's office. She threw the door open and then just froze, but Emily was there in seconds, her arms wrapping around her, holding her tightly. She tucked her face into her mother's neck, the familiar smell of her shampoo and perfume a comfort to her, and Wendy just sobbed. Great, heaving gasps erupted from her mouth as tears poured out of her eyes like a someone had tried to empty the ocean.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard Emily close the office door and felt her gently nudge them over to the sofa and gently guide them both down. Her mother rocked her back and forth and told her that she was safe, that no one would hurt her, just as she had so many years ago. And just like so many years ago, the nightmares began to slowly recede.

I think this is where I'm going to leave Wendy's story, but I've got another one of two stories in the Fallen AU that I'm working on focused on Emily and Dani. Thanks for reading and reviews always appreciated.