Disclaimer: I do not have the rights to SOA and make no profit from my writing. Anything you don't recognize from the show I have created.

Content Warning: This fanfiction is rated T. This fanfic includes suicidal thinking. If you are not comfortable reading about suicide please do not proceed.

Nora sat on the couch at home thinking everything over in her head. She really didn't understand Edmund. He had never shown actual interest in her physically, never leered at her or complimented her or technically asked her out. If he wanted a final say in the situation he could have done so at school, or even through text message. She hadn't blocked his number.

And then she thought of all the suspicious stuff. Finding out the town she lived in and the shop she worked at. Finding her house. And how the hell had he known who Hazel was? She had never told him her sisters' name. Never shown him a picture of her. Hazel had told Nora she was around the corner from the house when he approached her. How had he gotten information on her sister?

God, her sister. Hazel seemed fine. Everyone had told her she had done exactly the right thing, and she didn't show any signs of being upset or scared. She wasn't worried about what was happening to Edmund right now either. Nora couldn't believe she had put her sister in danger. Who knows what Edmund was capable of? What was his plan? Would he have hurt Hazel; abducted her? What was his plan when he got to Nora? What was his ultimate goal in all of this?

The thoughts spinning in her head were giving her a headache. She rubbed her temples and went to the kitchen for pain killers. She swallowed them with a sip of water and went to her room to lay down. Hazel was on the floor brushing Randy as if nothing had happened. She was chatting away to him about how he was shedding his summer coat, and getting hair on all her clothes. About how much he must have enjoyed playing with Brooke's 3-year-old, even though he had gotten his tail pulled, and how he was such a good boy for not nipping when that happened.

How was she so resilient? Was she just blocking out what had happened? Would it come out in her counseling sessions? She hoped it would. She didn't want her little sister repressing nearly getting kidnapped. God…she almost got her little sister kidnapped. Or maybe worse.

Nora sat down on the edge of the bed and toed off her running shoes. She hadn't ever bothered to change. Her legs still ached from the sprint to the car, and she was just starting to feel it through all the other thoughts floating around her head.

Nora laid down and listened to her little sister babble to the dog. She apparently had big plans for their last week together before she went back to school. Randy had to be one of the most spoiled dogs on the planet. When Hazel finished brushing the dog, she brought in the vacuum cleaner and Nora cringed at the noise in the room. She covered her head with a pillow to drown it all out.

"Nora?" Hazel jumped on Nora's bed when she had put away the vacuum. "NORRRAA" She called again and tugged at the pillow.

"What Hazy?" Nora asked as politely as she could.

"Can you drive me to Erin's house?"

"I'm not sure Uncle Alex wants us leaving the house right now." Nora responded.

"Fine." Hazel said with a pout and left the room, slamming the door.

Nora rolled over and checked her phone for a message. She had asked Jamal to tell her what happened, but she hadn't heard from him. She laid the phone face down and turned over to try and take a nap.

She had nightmares of Edmund.

SAMCRO rode back to the clubhouse as one big group. A job like that usually made the brothers pull together. They parked side by side in the lot and headed inside. Jamal took up his spot behind the bar and poured the men shots before doling out beers. He listened to the men talk. They had killed Edmund. He had guessed they would. The idea of it didn't sit comfortably with him. Even in the marines he had never been put in a position to kill anyone. The most action he got was filling in at a check point in Iraq. And he never came across a single person who wasn't authorized to be there.

He drank his own shot quickly and sat on the couch with his beer. He knew Nora was waiting to hear from him. But he just didn't know what to tell her. What he was allowed to tell her. What she could live with knowing.

Tig came over and sat on the coffee table across from him. "We need to talk." He said simply.

Jamal sat up straighter and listened.

"I saw you with Nora. In the parking lot. No more bull shitting me about you 2 being just friends. It's wrong, and it stops now. You got a problem with that; you can take it up with Edmund."

Jamal scowled and looked up at the other men watching the exchange. He had nothing to say.

"Leave the kids alone Tig." T.O. spoke up for him. "Jamal's a good kid, you couldn't ask for better for your niece."

"I couldn't ask for better?" Tig stood up and puffed out his chest. T.O. set down his beer and faced Tig directly.

"You've had a thorn up your ass about those 2 since the beginning. And Jamal has done nothing but be friendly and try to help out the girl. Are you telling me a girl that just lost her parents doesn't need a friend?"

"They aren't friends. Not anymore." Tig pointed to Jamal. Menace crossed his arms and looked at his nephew as well. He knew Tig spoke the truth.

"You will not see my niece. You will not speak to her. You will not think about her. Do you understand me, boy?" Tig looked back at Jamal.

"Is that really what this is about Tig? You don't want that 'boy' with your white niece. I thought we were past all this man." T.O. spoke up again. The other men all stayed silent. The older SAMCRO members knew what Tig was like when he was angry, what he was like when he felt his family was being threatened. And the newer members knew racial tensions could still rise quickly during spats between brothers.

"That's bull shit. This has nothing to do with race!" Tig got defensive.

"Then what Tig? What the hell is your problem with Jamal and Nora?" T.O. demanded.

"I don't want Nora involved in the club. Nora is a good girl. She's smart. She's gonna finish college and get a good job and settle down with a boring man who won't come home with blood on his hands." Tig spoke to the group now.

"Sounds to me like you're doubting the ability of this club." Chibs spoke up for the first time.

"Doubting the ability?" Tig asked, astonished. "I don't want Nora becoming an old lady. Old Ladies in this club don't have a very long life expectancy."

"Oh Tiggy, come on-" Chibs started.

"Tara was a doctor. A surgeon, and she got in this club life and she got dead." Tig started to list off. "Luanne was beaten to death and stuffed in the trunk of a car."

"That wasn't our fault-" Chibs tried to say before he was cut off.

"Gemma-" Tig started.

"Don't you bring Gemma into this. That was different, and you know it." Chibs snapped.

"Different? How? Gemma was gang rapped to send a message to the club. Chained up to a fence while masked men took turns tearing her apart!" Tig took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. "Donna-"

"DON'T YOU EVEN FUCKING SAY HER NAME!" Chibs yelled at him and stepped up to face him head on. "Don't you put her in your list you sick fucked up bastard."

"She's dead. Luanne is dead. Gemma's dead. Tara is dead. Nora is not going to die like that. Over my dead body will I let her become an old lady." Tig yelled back.

Jamal sat on the couch in silence. He didn't know the whole history of the club. He didn't know what was behind a lot of those deaths. But the idea of the woman he loved being beat to death…being gang rapped…made him sick to his stomach. He loved Nora too much to let that happen to her.

Nora woke up feeling worse then when she had gone to sleep. She had nightmare after nightmare of what Edmund had in mind to do to her, and to Hazel. And when she woke up and tried to convince herself her uncle had taken care of him, she drifted off again to more dreams of Edmund being tortured, beaten to death, shot, burned alive, every horrible death her imagination could create.

She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She checked her phone; it was only 6:30. By the sounds coming from the other side of the house she could tell she had woken to her uncle coming home. She dreaded seeing him after her nightmares had painted him as a murderer.

"Nora?" Tig showed up in the open doorway of the bathroom and looked her over. Nora stared back at him.

"We need to talk. Couch, now." Tig walked away again. "Hazy, take Randy for a walk." He dismissed his younger niece. Hazel eyed her older sister as she put Randy's leash on. She was about to get it bad.

"Edmund in no longer a problem." Tig stated simply.

"What did you do to him?"

"Don't concern yourself with that." He snapped.

"Did you hurt him?" She asked quietly, staring at her hands in her lap.

"I said don't concern yourself with that." He snapped again. Venus cleared her throat loudly at the kitchen table and stared Tig down. He needed to be gentler with the girl.

"This isn't about Edmund. This is about the club."

Nora stayed silent.

"I don't want you getting involved with the club. I don't want you talking to any of the men unless you're dropping off lunch. You don't need to be concerned with any of them anymore."

"By any of them…you mean Jamal."

"YES. And don't tell me you two are just friends. I'm not stupid. I saw you kiss him. I saw the way he held on to you. You are not friends. And you will not be involved with him. You have no need to see him again or communicate with him in any way. I forbid it." He crossed his arms in front of her and waited for her to sulk away.

"You forbid it?" Nora looked up at her uncle. The pent-up stress of the day broke out into immediate anger. "You forbid me from talking to the only friend I have made since moving here? Who the hell do you think you are? I'm an adult. You can't forbid me from doing anything. You aren't my father, Alex."

Tig took a deep breath. "I'm your guardian. And you're living in my house. My house, my rules."

"Your house?" Nora stood up. "Maybe I need to move out of YOUR house. I came here to be with my sister. Not because I needed someone to take care of me, and certainly not because I needed someone to dictate the decisions of my life." She started to storm to her room and Tig grabbed her arm.

"You think this is easy, you think I want to see that hurt look on your face? I'm doing this for you. I'm keeping you safe. I'm making sure you have the life your parents wanted for you!"

"My parents are dead! Their dreams for me died with them! Take your hand off me! Don't you EVER grab me!" Nora yanked her arm out of Tig's hand and stormed off to her room. She slammed the door just to spite him.

Tig ran a hand over his face.

"Well, you handled that well." Venus criticized and cleared her plate from the table. "I see you really have a way with teenage girls." She added as she set her plate in the sink, and then followed Nora's example and went to her room, slamming the door.

Nora sat in her room with tears streaming down her face. Her computer screen was a blur. She continued to roughly wipe the tears out of her eyes as she scrolled through her old college website.

Hazel came in the room with the dog and slipped off her shoes. She eyed her sister and saw she was crying. She came over and sat next to her on the bed, resting her head on her sister's shoulder.

"Was it bad? Was he really mad?" She asked.

"I don't want to talk about it." Nora snapped.

"Fine." Hazel said with a pout and looked at what her sister was doing on the laptop. "Central Wyoming College? That's where you used to go. Why are you on their site?"

"Don't worry about it." Nora said annoyed and snapped her laptop shut.

"Oh my god, you want to go back. You want to leave California. You want to leave me!" Hazel got up off the bed and started yelling.

"You could come with me. We could get an apartment. You could go to school with all your old friends again." Nora tried to sound sweet.

"You can't raise me. You're not an adult."

"Yes, Hazel, I am an adult. I'm an adult and I can make my own decisions. And those decisions don't always have to be based on what you want."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing Hazel. Just be quiet."

"NO! Tell me! What the hell is that supposed to mean."

"It means I came here for you. I stayed here and drove an hour to school everyday for you. I cook for you, I help you with your homework, I do everything for you. And you think I can't raise you? Haven't I been taking good enough care of you? What else can I possibly do that I'm not doing?"

"Well for one thing you could not have a creepy stalker come up to me on the street!" Hazel yelled back and stormed back out of the room.

Randy looked at Nora from his bed on the floor. Nora climbed down and nuzzled him. "I don't know what to do Randy. Everything is bad. Everything is messed up. I don't know what to do."

Nora sat at the kitchen table the next day playing with her lunch. She had been starving after her jog, but she couldn't make herself eat a bite. Hazel had left to go to a friend's house first thing in the morning. Venus and Alex were at work. She was alone in the house with her thoughts and demons.

Her phone buzzed and she dove for it. She was hoping to hear from Jamal. She had texted him last night and again this morning. She didn't want to be an annoying clingy girl, but she needed to talk to him.

She opened her phone and saw a message from a classmate from her chemistry lab. All it said was, 'Oh my god, I can't believe I know someone who would do this to himself!' And a link to a newspaper article. Nora furrowed her brows and followed the link. She read the title and looked at the picture. Even on the small screen of her phone she could tell it was a school photo of Edmund, probably from high school. He had over dosed in the back seat of his car behind a warehouse. His parents reported he had been depressed for the last 2 weeks and had suddenly insisted on changing schools. They did not believe he had a history of drug addiction.

Oh god. He didn't. He didn't have a history with drug addiction. Time of death was estimated within 3 hours of Hazel's frantic call to her. Her uncle had killed him. Shot him up with heroin and dumped him in his own car in a parking lot.

The thought made her sick and she ran to the bathroom and started to heave into the toilet. She didn't have very much in her system to come up. She sat on the floor of the bathroom and wrapped her arms around herself. It was her fault. It was her fault he was dead. They had killed him because of her. If she hadn't been here, if they hadn't been partners, Edmund would still be alive.

It took Nora an hour to pull herself together. She had tried to call Jamal, with no answer, and sent him a text that she was freaking out and really needed to talk to him.

She pulled into the TM lot and parked with a jerk. She got out and walked towards the line of bikes where he was waxing them.

"Jamal." She called to get his attention. "Jamal, please. I need to talk to you."

Jamal stood up and looked at her. He glanced to the open garage door and saw Tig staring him down. He sighed and threw down his rag.

"Nora, you need to go." He said, staying where he was.

Nora walked up to him. "Jamal, they killed him. The cops found his body. They killed him." Her eyes welled with tears and Jamal's heart tore in half.

"You need to go. I can't talk to you. Stop texting me."

"Jamal-"

"No, Nora. I was given orders. I can't talk to you. Go. Now."

Nora backed up a step. Tears falling freely now.

"Fine. I see where I rate. Getting into this stupid club is more important than your best friend." She turned around and walked back to her car, slamming the door.

Jamal watched her take deep breaths to slow her tears before she tore back out of the parking lot.

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