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Chapter 21

After leaving her at the clubhouse, Tig and Happy had disappeared on an errand of Clay's. It wasn't soon enough to avoid Jax, who'd stopped in front of Tig as they were leaving and put a hand up on the door, giving him a cold, unflinching stare. The joking conversation of the guys had stopped suddenly, with a dangerous uncertainty taking it's place. Jax's eyes flashed into the room, noting the presence of Aisha, but his stare didn't get any less confrontational.

Tig met Jax's look without backing down, settling his cold, blue eyes on the younger man's face. A derisive, tight half-smile began to cross Jax's face, and at the sight of it, Tig started to move forward slightly, his own expression becoming eager.

"C'mon, man," Happy said, stepping in front of Tig. "Not today. Enough excitement already."

Tig didn't look away from Jax's face. "You have something you want to say to me?"

With a smirk and a disgusted shake of the head, Jax pushed himself away from the doorframe and started to walk away. "Nah," he said. "Nothin' you're gonna hear."

As the two men left, Jax walked back into the clubhouse, where Chibs and Aisha were sitting on the couch, him taping up the fingers of her left hand. That meant V was here, he guessed, hating himself for linking them in his mind like that. "Hey," he said to Aisha, noticing what had happened to her with some shock. Had Tig or Hap gotten started on her, before someone's mind had changed about the whole thing? "How're you feeling?" he asked her, unable to imagine what she might be thinking right then.

She looked up at him and smiled, gesturing to Chibs and her hand. "Glad to be a rightie." she said. Jax could sense something different about her. Couldn't put his finger on it, and it wasn't the same defiance she'd had after pulling his gun on him. It was more like she was telling him she had a right to be there.

Chibs snorted. "She feels like someone who just rode down from Tahoe on the back of a bike with two broken fingers and a cracked rib," he remarked. "She needs to take something for the pain, and get some sleep. Like Hap said, it's enough excitement."

-0-

Aisha woke up in his bed, still in disarray from her last time there. Her shoulder was really killing her, but the hand, which had been the worst thing, had actually settled down to a dull ache. She remembered the Scottish one who'd taped her up, she still didn't know his name, telling her she had to sleep. She hadn't taken anything he'd offered, but she felt heavy and confused and tired nonetheless.

I'll get some water, she decided, and then go back to sleep. If there was anything she'd learned over the years it was to sleep while she could, and besides, she didn't even feel like she could keep her eyes open longer than a minute, anyway.

She was running cold water into a coffee mug when she felt someone behind her. "Remind me," said a woman's voice, "that if they ever drop the bomb, you're who I want to be standin' next to."

She turned around to see Gemma, cigarette in hand. Aside from her, the place seemed to be empty. Aisha was still frightened of the woman, but after the bald guy with the tattoos, anything else was really just a question of degree. "Why's that?" she asked.

Gemma smirked a bit. "Because you," she said, "have all the luck in the world."

Aisha nodded a bit at that. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I guess that's true."

An almost unwilling concern flickered at the back of Gemma's eyes. "How're you doing?" she asked suddenly.

Aisha thought about it. "I don't know," she said. "Tired. Where'd they all go?"

"Club business," Gemma said. "I came by to ask you if you could come over and give me some help tomorrow afternoon. Planning to have a few people over, don't have quite enough hands."

Aisha nodded, taking the overture for what it was. "I can't always call my time my own," she said, giving Gemma a look that Gemma had no trouble interpreting, "but I'm pretty sure it would be fine."

Gemma nodded and smiled a bit. "Well, then," she said, exhaling smoke sharply, "that'll be fun. You should go back to sleep. Everything's going to be fine."

Aisha obediently set down the cup and went back to Tig's room. Gemma kept watching her as she went. She wasn't sure what to think about this, but looked at another way, it might not be as bad as she'd first thought. After all, the past few years had been good ones with Tig as Clay's right hand. He'd been focused, steady. If this girl had been around all that time, some of that had to be due to her, even if just as a place to put some of that perpetual energy the man walked around practically crackling with. If she and Clay could keep an eye on the girl, well... it might just bring Tig in all that much closer.

-0-

Tig looked around as soon as he got into the clubhouse. He'd hoped to see Clay, but there was apparently some sort of sit-down planned now that V had softened up the Nords a bit (he had to suppress a chuckle at that one, he was kind of sorry he'd missed it). Bobby was off someplace, and the only one hanging around was the Prospect. It wouldn't be, he reflected, a bad time to deal with Aisha.

He felt a hand on his arm as he headed towards the door of his room, and turned around. He'd thought Happy had split off after they parked. Instead, he stood there, shaking his head. "Let her sleep," he said.

Tig stopped. If anyone else had said it, Jax, or Bobby, or V... well, he'd probably have had to haul her out of the room and put her to work in front of them, and he might have thrown a punch for good measure. Happy speaking up, though, was different. Also, he thought he had an idea of what Hap was getting at. "You think?" he asked.

"Yeah. That sort of thing stays with you a while. I've seen it before." he shook his head again. "I mean it. Let her sleep."

Happy grabbed a couple of beers, and the two sat down on the couches. They were silent for a second, then Tig whipped his head around. "Hey, Sack," he snapped. "Get the fuck out of here."

After Half-Sack had left, Tig leaned back and rubbed his face with his hands. "I don't know, man," he said. "I'm still not sure where Clay stands on all of this."

"Clay's fine," Happy said. He paused for a couple of minutes, then leaned forward. "OK, I gotta ask," he said.

"What?" Tig looked confused. "The fingers?"

Happy snorted and shook his head. "Not that. The fingers I get." He looked like he was choosing his words carefully. "Never figured you for a guy that fucked kids. I gotta say."

Tig gave him an affronted look. "She's almost twenty years old, man."

Happy gave him a look. "Clay told me how long you had her in that apartment. How old was she when that all started?"

Tig looked confused, then waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, that. Jesus, no, I wasn't hittin' that until maybe a year and a half ago."

Happy looked like he was considering this. "Yeah, I don't get that," he finally said, and laughed a bit. "I guess in that case I have to ask, why not?"

Tig realized he'd never actually tried to work it out before, out loud. "Well," he said. "you have to understand, she didn't look like much at first. Didn't have any plan to keep her around. Besides, she was scared of me." He chuckled a bit, remembering.

Happy had another drink. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Terrified. She stayed, though. I had no idea why." He sensed that Happy was just staying quiet, listening. "So at first, it wasn't on my mind, and God knows what was on hers, but that wasn't it." He drained the rest of his beer in a single drink. "Then, out of nowhere, she came onto me one night."

Happy started to laugh. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"When was that?"

Tig thought about it. "Maybe two, two-and-a-half years back?"

Happy was quiet again for a moment. "And you didn't."

"Right. I did not. Didn't want to mess up a good thing. Kid took care of everything in the place, was nice, was... happy to see me, you know? I didn't want her to start getting' all..." he made a confused face. "You know. How they get." He waited for Happy's nod. "But after that," he said, "I gotta admit it was in my head whenever I went over there."

"So why'd you wait so long?"

Tig reached for his second beer, stopped and thought. "I liked watching her want it," he said finally. "Plenty of Crow Eaters around, if I wanted to fuck something. That one..." he opened his beer and took a drink. "I just like watching the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching. Desperate, like she'd do anything, you know?"

Happy reflected. He did know, in a way. Not in Tig's way—he didn't think he'd want something so stark, so wildly off-balance in terms of power. He remembered the way Aisha had looked him in the eye when he had the gun to her head, and they way her eyes had dropped, instinctively, when Tig came into the room, even though he could tell how badly she'd wanted to see the man. He taught her that, Happy thought. Probably trained in into her to the point where it's reflex now. He waited a minute. "Yeah, so finish the story," he said.

"What the fuck do you mean finish the story? I fucked her, didn't change how bad she wanted it, probably made it worse in fact." He paused for a moment, thinking of the things he wasn't going to mention... the way it looked when he could glance down and see her kneeling, feel her pressing her lips to his boot. The way he'd stopped letting her eat with him, but watched her down there, throwing her something when he was done. He shook his head. "The rest you know. Some shit got stirred up and I brought her here, Clay told you to go up there and put a bullet in her head when my fuckin' back was turned, right?"

Happy looked only mildly surprised. "That's pretty much how it was."

"So why'd he change his mind?"

"Sorry." Happy shook his head. "Can't tell you that, brother. It's Clay, you know? He does what feels right at the time."

"So what else do you want to know? About the fingers?"

"I told you, you don't have to tell me. The fingers I get."

Tig looked interested. He wasn't sure he understood, completely, why he did the things he did. "Why the fingers, then?"

Happy shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because you could."

Tig had started laughing as he picked up his cellphone. Happy watched it disappear, Tig's face turn hard and focused. "Shit, I could've told you that meet was no fuckin' good, Clay," he said urgently. His tone told Happy two things—that nothing important had changed between Clay and his sergeant-at-arms, nothing that was going to do any lasting damage... and that something seriously bad had just gone down.

Tig snapped his phone shut and stood up. "Come on, we could use you," he said. "Darby used the meet to have some Russians roll in, almost shot Clay, grabbed V."

Happy jumped up and grabbed his keys. He couldn't explain what the words had done to him exactly, but since tattooing V, all he could see was her scar. He'd wanted to tell her how fucking beautiful he thought it was, but figured that was shit she didn't want to hear. "Clay know where they took her?" he asked.

"No," said Tig as they rushed to the bikes, "he's got no idea where the Russians are holed up. Figures Darby or one of the others do, though." He turned to Happy and smiled. "Think we get to go find out."