Hello lovely readers! Super sorry about the delay in updates, but I recently got a new puppy and he's a little attention seeker so he has been taking up a lot of my time lately. Also, I've never worked with a Beta before or know much about how they work but I have been looking for a Beta so if anyone would like to help me out it's much appreciated. As usual your reviews, favorites and follows are keep me updating and sticking with this story and I'm very thankful to all of you for sticking with this story.

I've hit a little block with writing depressed Juice, and I'm not sure how I'm going to pull him out of his craziness. I'm trying to keep this as real life as possible and it's not easy to get rid of mental health problems, but I'm also aware that not everyone wants to read sad Juice all the time, because it can be draining, trust me I know it's draining writing it sometimes.

Hopefully this chapter might show you that there's a bit of a change going on in Juice's progress, but he still has a long way to go.

Enjoy!

Chapter 4

The tick of the clock in the background soothed Juice's rapid thoughts as he sat on the soft couch in Doctor Lyon's room. Doctor Lyons was sat across from him with his long legs folded and he's black socks peeking out from his suit. Doctor Lyons was a young enough doctor, he was in his thirties with blonde hair neatly combed to the side. He was good looking in the 'clean, cut' sense, but there was no ring on his finger or pictures on his desk. Juice has been speculating for a few days now if the doctors were even allowed to have anything personal in here.

"Tell me about her." Doctor Lyon's voice was smooth and professional as he addressed Juice about Darvany.

He couldn't talk about her. He really couldn't. It hurt too much. She was so innocent. She was a mother. She was a junkie. She was unpredictable. She lost her son, because of you.

"Why not?"

"Because I can't."

"Juice." Doctor Lyons sighed. They had been here before. "We have to talk about these things. So, that we can address those voices and create a solution."

Juice knew this. He had known this since day one, but it hurt. It hurt to open up wounds he had been trying and failing to close up.

"…She was pretty, she had short blonde hair and pretty face but she had a problem. She was a junkie, but she was also a mother. I didn't know much about her except that she was a liability. And liabilities are bad. Really bad."

"So what did you do Juice?"

Juice's voice caught in his throat and a lump formed there. He couldn't say the words. "I had to be on good terms again. I had to deal with the situation."

Darvany was the pushing point for Juice, she was the reason for the voices and the thousand pound weight of guilt on his shoulders. It was bad before her but he was slowly pulling himself together after he's failed suicide attempt, he was coming to terms with killing Miles. It had been self-defensive for him. He told himself that over and over again until he slowly started to believe it, but then came Chibs and Jax and his redemption.

Darvany was supposed to be his redemption but she ended up being his demise.

He couldn't convenience himself it was self-defence this time because it wasn't even close to a struggle or fight, it had been plain unprovoked motivated murder. He was a cold-blooded murder. There was no justifying killing an innocent mother no matter how unstable or addicted to drugs she was. Murder is murder but Miles is justifiable. Or so, Juice tells himself.

Juice had lost his last shred of his humanity when he put the soft pillow over Darvany's pretty face. He could literally feel his soul shatter into a thousand razor sharp pieces as Darvany struggled for her last breaths. That's when Juice knew there was no coming back from himself. He wasn't exactly sure when the voices started. If it was as soon as Darvany took her last breath and he tried to tell himself it was the right thing to do or if they started an hour later, a day, hell even a week later. All Juice knew was they were there and they chatted up a storm.

"Be on good terms with who Juice?" Doctor Lyon's smooth voice pulled Juice from his thoughts while he stared in the distance at the ticking clock over the Doctors head.

"My family."

"Your family would make you 'get rid' of someone, knowing the pervious events?"

Juice's large brown eyes snapped to look at the Doctors blue eyes. This was the first time Doctor Lyons had mentioned that he was reading between the lines of Juice's lies. Juice had a feeling the Doctor knew all of his little white lies and twisted events were just that white lies and twisted events.

"…I didn't kill her. I-I-I just had to make her go away."

Doctor Lyons didn't look convinced as he met Juice's lie head on. "If you say so, Juice. You just made her go away. Your family still made you do that. Family doesn't make you do things you don't want, Juice."

"You don't understand I had to. She couldn't stick around. I had to redeem myself." Juice remembered what Jax said word for word.

"I understand that, but you said you had a big family correct?" Juice nodded his head weakly. "So, why did it have to be you, besides the redemption. Surely there was another way to redeem yourself and surely they knew what would happen if you did make her go away, yes?"

"Yeah, I guess." Juice shrugged indifferently, he still killed Darvany no matter who gave the order. He was still the murder.

Yes you are.

"Juice, what I'm trying to make you see is that although you committed those actions, there was a string of people behind you pulling in certain directions so that you felt like those actions were your only way out. Do you understand?" Doctor Lyons un-crossed his legs and rested his elbows on his knees to mirror Juice's posture.

"So… you're saying I was manipulated?" Juice scoffed in disgust. Sons didn't get manipulated. But he was barely a son anymore.

"More or less, yes. Did you know that as part of police training they are required to know how to read people and take psychology classes to help with integrations and in those psychology classes they teach them about manipulation."

"Yeah I know Doc." Juice replied in a 'duh' voice as if it was obvious news. Juice had told Doctor Lyons all about Roosevelt and the Assistant DA turning him into a rat.

Doctor Lyons smirked at Juice's snide reply but continued speaking

"Did you also know, that it's extremely hard to know when you're being manipulated until you take yourself out of a certain situation or an outside source tells you otherwise. Manipulation is one of the strongest tools a human can use against another human. Most people don't even realize when they are being manipulative, it's such a common occurrence from relationships down to friendships. To the girlfriend wearing the pretty top to make her boyfriend do something she wants, to the friend that makes you watch a movie you hate. Manipulation comes in all shapes and forms, Juice."

Juice knew that too. But he was smart, at least he consider himself smart enough to read people to know when he was being lied to and cheated. Maybe, just maybe Jax and Chibs had manipulated him? Giving that they had known he wasn't in the best frame of mind maybe they had taken advantage of that? Juice didn't want to think of his brothers like that. He wanted to think of them as trying to help him and save him by doing that one terrible act, but there was something plaguing his thoughts about it all.

Jax didn't want to kill Darvany because he was new best friends with Nero, he didn't want that stain on their business arrangement, Chibs wouldn't do it because he had morals, but Happy and Tig had been there, yet he still chose him? Not just because he owed a debt, because Jax knew what he had been through, he knew what would happen to Juice when he killed Darvany, he just didn't care. Sure, shit had been pilling with Opie's death and Tara's jail stint but that still didn't give Jax the right to use him and…. Manipulate him. Just like Doctor Lyons had said. Juice had been manipulated and he was only seeing that now.

"I understand what you're saying Doc." Juice hated to admit it but he had been manipulated.

"So you understand while your actions caused the voices to appear, the decisions of others essentially created them into existence." It was a statement, not a question and that got Juice's mind reeling.

He had never thought about the voices in that way, he had always just accepted them as part of his own guilty conscious but now he realised that other people's decisions and actions had played a role in the creation of the voices and for that Juice held some anger at them. He was suffering because people had been using him, playing him for their own game. He also recognised the role he played in the creation of the voices, if only he had been stronger and braver then there would be no voices. He could sit all day and belittle himself about the ifs and buts but the reality was it happened and that was it.

"Juice I think that's enough for today. We'll pick up here again tomorrow, same time."

Juice was exhausted.

Hannah paced slowly around the long corridor of the hospital. She was coming back from lunch in the main canteen of the hospital and sipping slowly on her now lukewarm coffee. It was Tuesday so she got a break from conducting group sessions because the hospital had a connection with a local mental health clinic that specialized in positivity talks. So once a week the group got an hour pep talk basically and a break from her. Hannah didn't mind the positivity thing, she had seen it work for some people and she was a firm believer that happier thoughts led to a happier life, but she couldn't stand the preppy little college student that volunteered every week to do the positivity talk. Hannah liked to consider herself a happy person, even a positive person, but she wasn't that happy. Nine times out of ten she was happy but like the majority of people she had her moments too but she was sure the speaker never faltered in their positivity, like ever.

Hannah threw her mostly finished coffee into the waste bin just outside of the heavy security doors before she scanned her key card and made her way inside. With an hour of her time scheduled off, she usually made rounds or caught up with some of the Doctors, but before that she usually stuck her head in to check on the group and their 'power positivity' as some of the younger patients liked to call it, albeit very sarcastically.

Hannah liked to see which patients actually showed up to the power positivity talk, people liked to mix and match. Patients from Monday, Wednesday and Friday's group sessions often showed up to the talk whereas not many of Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays group turned up, but it was open to all patients. There was only twelve in each group so there couldn't be that much attending. When Hannah stuck her head in she counted twenty heads sitting down, so four patients were playing lackey and one of them was Juice.

Hannah shook her. Juice wasn't a bad guy, far from it, but he just made life hard for himself. Hannah considered him a friend in here and she liked to think he thought the same for her, but she couldn't be sure. Juice was unpredictable, in his words and actions.

Hannah was now on the hunt for her four missing patients that weren't at the group positivity talk. It wasn't that they weren't allowed to skip, more so that it was frowned upon if their therapist found out and she liked to keep them out of trouble if she could. She found Marley fairly quick, hiding out in his room and convinced him to go to the talk, Alice wasn't far behind him and Ricky an older patient followed after them with his head hung.

Juice was her last stop and she knew exactly where to find him. He liked to spend his recreation time sitting by one of the big bay windows down the back of the long room looking out at the back of the hospitals gardens. It was a nice view if the bars weren't on the windows.

"I knew I'd find you here." Hannah said as she pulled up a plastic chair to sit beside Juice.

Juice briefly smiled at Hannah but it didn't reach his eyes.

"Sooo, why aren't you sitting in on the 'power positivity' speech?" Hannah inquired as she looked over Juice's appearance. He looked tired. Drained even.

"I don't feel like it today." Juice mumbled, still looking over at the garden.

"Are you okay? Sleeping well?"

"Just fine." Juice kept his answer short and clipped.

Hannah sighed at Juice's cold front. She was used to people being hot and cold in the hospital, didn't mean she liked it from anyone.

"Ok, seeing as you're full of chat today, why don't you go to the talk so someone will shut you up?" She was joking of course but Juice didn't crack a smile.

"No." Juice remained tight lipped. And Hannah sighed.

They remained quiet for a few minutes just looking out the window. Juice lost in his thoughts and Hannah trying to think of something that would get Juice talking again.

"What's it like, yano, to be in a Motorcycle group?" Hannah tried using a topic Juice might like to talk about.

"Club. They call it a club, not group."

"Oh right, club then. What's it like? Is it as dangerous as people say?" Hannah was genuinely curious. She had never had a patient that was a criminal before.

"I don't know, it can be I guess. Depends on what you call dangerous." Juice shrugged his shoulders, not really wanting to talk about the club today. He had enough with his thoughts about them.

"What would you call dangerous?"

"Can we stop with the questions?!" Juice snapped hotly. Hannah looked startled as her hazel eyes widen as she glanced at Juice. She was so shocked and startled by his outburst.

"Fine." Hannah stood up and placed her chair back, ready to give Juice the space he so desperately desired. She left him sitting there staring out the window alone.

Read and Review, please and thank you.

Poofx