AN: You're all probably going to hate me for this! Better things to come, I promise. Thanks again for the reviews/follows/favourites. They make my day. x

Brendan II

His eyes are set to the ground and you can see the pink in his cheek, his golden skin covered in a blanket of rage. He doesn't respond to you. It's as though he's been shut off from the world. "Steven?" you enquire, hoping to break his trance.

It takes a moment before he lift his head again, but he doesn't meet your eyes. Instead his lock on to Lucas' and he croaks out a response. "Will you leave us?" He's not angry at Lucas, you can tell that much. You know it's himself that he's angry at. "You too, Leah."

They both walk away from the table, Leah shooting out the front door with Lucas making his way upstairs, before Steven swiftly stands up and moves in to the living room. He paces up and down, stumbling a little when his knee catches the coffee table and you follow him with your eyes.

The tension is too much for you after a few minutes, so you tentatively move out of your chair and approach him. He's got his back to you as he steps in front of the living room window, staring out as he senses you behind him. You peck at his neck, trying to relax him but he tenses for a moment before lolling his head to the side, giving in to your touch. "Brendan," he sighs. You place your hands at his hips, delicately moving them in a circular motion to relax him further. You want him to know that he can trust you with whatever he's about to tell you. "Oh God, I can't do it."

"Yes," you whisper in to his ears. "Yes, you can." You kiss the back of his ear and then move towards his jaw and you hear him sigh as visibly relaxes.

"Okay," he blows out a breath. "But you seriously have to stop with that," he forces out a chuckle. You reluctantly back away, holding your hands up in surrender and he smiles at your display as he turns to face you for the first time since his outburst. "Sit down, please."

"Steven, you're scaring me"

"Please," his eyes are watery and sad and you want nothing but to kiss away his pain. You reluctantly sit down on the sofa and watch as he prepares to speak. When words come out of his mouth, it's soft and quiet and his eyes are glued to the ground as he continues his earlier actions of pacing up and down the room. "After you left, I got in to a lot of trouble. Like, involved with some really bad shit." You wince slightly despite your effort to show no emotion. To not let yourself judge the situation before he's said all he's wanted to say. You know it's your fault, though. If you hadn't left him, none of this would have happened and you would have kept your promise of protecting him until you were in your grave. You blame no one but yourself.

"What did you do?" your response is firm but lacks scold because you can't be angry at him. You've created this problem. The only person you should be angry with is yourself.

"I didn't want to work at the deli anymore. I wanted a buzz. I wanted to be excited again. I wanted to replace what I felt with you. So…" He gazes up at you and he sits down on the other sofa, looking you dead in the eye. "I starting dealing." His lips tremble a little and he tilts his head to the side as he waits for your response.

"Go on," is all you say. You know this is far from the whole story.

"I got tired of it after a while. I didn't want to put my kids in danger," he wipes at his forehead before placing both his hands behind his neck. "He hurt me."

"Who?" You question, your hands pulled in to fist, your cheeks reddened with anger.

"Trevor." Trevor? You try to place the name but you can't quite make a connection. "He used to give me the drugs to deal but I was stupid and tried to get one over on him and of course he found out." His accent becomes more pronounced as his anger grows. "I started working for him, on and off but when I realised that I was just putting myself and my kids in danger I decided to get away for good. I needed money so I stole it from him. Stupid, aren't I?"

"No, it's not. You wanted protect those you loved. That's not stupid. It's brave."

"No, it was fucking stupid!" He sighs, looks up towards the ceiling and leans back on the sofa. "Trevor found out, obviously. His henchmen tracked me down while we were trying to get away. Amy and the kids were there in the car. I was wasted, Brendan. I was so fucking pissed but I still got in that car with my kids and their mother in there with me. They were following us and Amy just kept screaming at me and Lucas wouldn't stop crying and my head just felt like it was going to burst." He begins to sob and you want to get up and hold him but you're not sure he'll welcome it. He's already told you to back off once today. "I couldn't take it anymore so I tried to end it." You can barely make out what he's saying because his sobbing is getting uncontrollable now. "They was just chasing us and I just panicked, Bren. I'd never thought about it ever before, I'd never ever felt like that but in that moment I was so fucked up in the head that I thought it was the only way to escape. I tried to end it. I tried to kill my own children… I'm a monster." The last sentence comes out as barely a whisper.

You don't have time to register any of it before Lucas comes storming in, rage fully evident in his eyes. "YOU DID THIS TO ME?" Clearly Steven had not told him the full extent of the story. "You're the reason why I can't sleep at night? You're the reason why I can't go a single day without getting this pain in my head? Without reliving every single moment of the crash? Without seeing flashes of mum in so much pain?" Tears are swimming down his face and you know what he's feeling. Losing faith in someone you love. Your nana. You had adored her before you knew.

You look back at Steven and you see panic in his eyes. "Lucas, please listen to me," he begs. "Please, you don't understand. I was trying to protect you. I would never have done anything to hurt you, I still wouldn't but in that moment some thick, psychotic part of me thought that I was doing the right thing. Because then, he wouldn't get to you. You don't know what he was capable of. He would have hurt you, killed you without a second's thought and for some reason I thought that it'd be better to go that way than to have him make me watch while he kill you all, because that's what he would have done."

Lucas runs back upstairs and Steven gets up to follow but you grab him by the arm. "I need to talk to my son," he says but you know that it's not the best idea right now.

"Let me," you say and you let go of your grip on him and walk up the stairs towards Lucas' room.

-x-

You get to door of his bedroom before he can slam it shut, so you let it bounce off of your palms. "Hey, you need to calm down!" You shout, because you don't think anything else will get a reaction out of him.

"This is YOUR fault," he looks you dead in the eye and he flings his words at you. "If you hadn't left, none of this would have happened!"

"Hey, I had no choice!" You bite back. You need him to understand that this was never what he wanted. "I had to leave. I had no idea that this would happen."

You can't have this ruin his relationship with his father. You'd give an arm and a leg to prevent that from happening, so you attempt to understand what was going through Steven's head. You calmly sit on his bed and Lucas follows. "Look, whatever he did… he thought he was doing what was best at the time." You sigh, you can't imagine what state he'd have been in to even contemplate such an act. The Steven you knew would never hurt his kids. This is what you had driven him too. "He loves you, you know that? He loves you now. He loved you then. Sometimes things happen and they mess with your head. It makes you think things that you'd never think if you were thinking just a little clearly."

You don't think your words are having the desired effect so you take a different approach. "You know, I have lived through a lot of shit in my lifetime and I can tell you now that I've thought about ending the… pain. Yeah, the pain. I've thought about ending it so many times. But Steven? That was probably the one and only time that he's ever thought it. One reckless little moment that he's regretted ever since he thought it."

"He's ruined my life," he says through tears.

"No. No he hasn't," you say, lifting his head with your hand on his chin so that he's looking at you. "What you have is fixable. If I can get through what I have, then you can get through yours. And trust me, I would have swapped positions with you without a second's thought when I was your age." You let go, see him wipe his tears on his sleeve, mannerisms almost identical to his father that it makes you smile. "Your dad isn't a bad man, Lucas. Sure, he's no angel but he'd sell his soul to protect you. Some kids would do anything for that. Don't… don't be angry at him for this. He was in a bad place. He wasn't the person you know to be your dad. I know what it's like to be so detached that you can't tell the difference between what's right from wrong anymore. But, he's not like that anymore, is he? He's your da. He loves you. Takes care of you. That's more than I ever got. Cling on to it. Don't make one moment of madness ruin your relationship. Steven Hay is a good man. A better one than I deserve."

You didn't mean to make it about yourself, but it's true. You've done worse than him. How can he ever think that you would love him any less? It's a shock, of course. But it makes you angry at yourself more than anything. You led him to it. You're the reason for all of this. You leaving him. You messed with his head, and not for the first time.

-x-

You take a breath before you enter the kitchen. He turns to meet your gaze and you stand there staring each other in silence for a few moments, not knowing what to say. His eyes are swollen and rimmed with red.

"Amy," you say. "What happened to her?"

He looks down, again, struggles to look at you when he speaks. "She's in a wheelchair. Paralysed from the neck down. She's in Manchester, with her dad. He looks after her." He hesitates before he looks back up to you. "She knows, you know. About everything."

"And?"

"And she's forgiven me. I don't know how, I don't know why but she has."

"Good."

"He hates me, doesn't he?"

"I don't know."

"Oh God. I hate myself so much," he eyes begin to tear up again and before you know it, you're embracing him, telling him that everything will be okay even though you're not sure it is. "I don't know what to say," he muffles in to your shoulder.

"Just, shh," you pull back and cup his face in your hand. "Steven, he's had a shock. Let him calm down and you can talk about it then."

"And what about you? Do you hate me?"

"Steven, I could never hate you. That's never gonna happen."

He reaches for your hand on his face and threads his fingers around your own. His eyebrows crease. "Please don't leave me."

"I won't," you whisper.