Disclaimer: See initial chapter.

A/N: This is not part of what was originally posted on A03, but this is what I had originally planned to post. Thank you delia cerrano, and Yammy - I appreciate your reviews.


Juice wakes, gulping in a lungful of air. It burns a path down the back of his throat. He tries to roll over, but there're hands on him, holding him down, and he can't breathe.

Something wet and cold touches his back, makes him wince and cringe. It sets his back on fire, but then the pain subsides, almost as quickly as it had come, and he's confused. Juice anticipates more pain, another lash of the whip, but it doesn't come.

He can hear voices, and that's when he opens his eyes. It's dark, but he can see – shadowy, faceless shapes that flicker and play across the wall. Terrified of what he'll see when the shapes materialize– Archibald and a group of his equally sick minded cronies surrounding him – Juice renews his efforts to get away, kicking and thrashing ineffectually against the hands that bind him.

"Juice, stop. You're going to hurt yourself."

Clay's voice breaks over him like a cascade of cool, refreshing water, and Juice simply stops fighting. He remembers then that he was rescued, but it takes a minute or two for him to get his breathing under control. The gentle pressure of Clay's fingers, massaging the back of his neck, help anchor him.

"You okay?"

Juice nods, and his eyelids droop, but he refuses to let them close. He doesn't want to wake up and find that this – lying face down on a comfortable bed, while his back is being tended to – has been just a brief reprieve from a reality better suited to nightmares.

"Go back to sleep, Juice," Clay says.

It's not quite a command, but there's gruffness to the man's voice that Juice finds hard to disobey. His sense of loyalty to Clay wars with the fear that sleeping will put him back in the cellar and at the not so tender mercies of Archibald.

"I've got you, now," Clay reassures him, his fingers dance across the back of Juice's neck. "You're safe. Nothing bad's gonna happen to you."

He feels something cold and wet on his back. It stings, and he hisses. He tries to get away from whatever it is that's on his back, but Clay is holding him in place.

Clay's fingers flutter across the back of Juice's neck. "Easy, just breathe through the pain."

"I'm sorry."

Juice turns his head toward the sound of Tara's voice. She's sitting beside him, holding a white cloth in her hand. Her eyes are steely, but she offers him a small smile.

"That's okay," Juice whispers. At least you're not whipping me, he thinks.

"Try to relax," Tara says, she bites her lip and turns away briefly, and when she looks at Juice once again, her eyes are simmering with anger and sorrow, "I know that it hurts. As soon as I clean up these cuts, I'll give you something for the pain."

"What else…" Juice's question is cut off with a cough, but Tara's eyes fill with understanding and Clay's fingers still on the back of his neck. He finds it hard to breathe, he's hot and cold, and he feels like he's going to be sick.

"He used a pool cue," Tara says, her voice clinical, detached. Her eyes, though, are a different story; they're compassionate, understanding, and then her gaze shifts somewhere else. "To sodomize you. There's some minor tearing and tissue damage, but that will heal with some topical treatment."

Clay curses, and Tara holds Juice's gaze. Numb, Juice simply nods. He doesn't resist when she wraps his hand in one of hers and squeezes.

"I don't remember that," Juice says, and it sounds like it's someone else speaking. "I . . . I just remember the whip."

"Even if you don't remember it, your body will," Tara says, and she adds a quiet, "sorry," and squeezes his hand.

"No," Juice says, and he draws in a shaky breath, hoping to keep the tears which are threatening to fall at bay, "it's not your fault, it's mine."

"No, Juice," Clay says, his voice is hard and his fingers dig into Juice's neck. "What happened to you was not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I should've fought back harder, gotten free." Juice swallows his tears, refuses to let them fall, refuses to let him mind dwell on something that he can't even remember.

Clay stiffens beside him, his fingers hover at the nape of Juice's neck, just barely touching. "We should've noticed you weren't back sooner. We stopped him from…" Clay swallows, "from doing anything else."

"It's okay. I don't remember," Juice says, and he tries to smile.

Except, it isn't okay, and it will probably never be okay, and he wants to cry, but he can't, because Clay and Tara are there, and he already feels stupid enough about what happened without crying like a baby over it.

"Tig," Clay pauses, but his fingers continue their comforting ministrations. He coughs, and when he picks up the story again, his voice is strained.

"Tig was the first one down the stairs. Chibs and Jax were right behind him. Then Happy, and I came last," his voice hitches, and he coughs again to clear it, "Tig got one look at what that bastard was doing to you, and didn't hesitate. Shot him, twice. Didn't kill him though. Left that pleasure to Happy."

Knowing that the guys saw that causes Juice's stomach to turn, and a single tear slides down his cheek, and then another, and another, and then he's just crying outright. Unable to stop the tears from coming, he buries his face into the pillow, and sobs.

Tara continues to tend to his back, gently cleaning and disinfecting the cuts, but Juice is barely aware of it. Clay's fingers knead and work a kind of magic in his tight neck muscles, making him relax in spite of the images running through his mind of the guys watching while Archibald used a pool cue on him.

Juice knows he's going to be sick before the bile burns its way, like lava, up the back of his throat. He can't even say anything to warn Tara or Clay. He twists to the side, leans over the bed, and his back protests the movement.

With a sudden lurch, he expels the meager contents of his stomach onto the floor. He can't even remember the last time that he ate, and his stomach clenches painfully as he continues to retch and nothing of substance comes out.

He can feel Clay's lips brushing against his ear; his fingers are a comfort on the back of his neck, and though he can't understand what it is that the man's saying, Juice draws comfort from the gentle rumble of Clay's murmured words.

Clay shifts, and Juice feels the loss of him keenly, wants to draw the man back, but his stomach isn't letting him move. "You got something that will help with this?"

"I'll give him something for the pain," Tara says. Her hand feels cold on Juice's forehead, and he pulls away from the touch, even as he dry heaves.

"Easy," Clay's mouth is back against his ear, and Juice calms, the ache in his stomach eases, and the retching stops. He doesn't understand why, doesn't really want to question this connection that he seems to have with the older man right now, but he's grateful.

"That's it, just let Tara do her work." Clay's hand is a steady, reassuring weight on the back of his head. Before he knows it, he's slipping into unconsciousness, floating from whatever painkillers Tara's pumped into his veins.