"There's my baby girl!"
Juice looked up at the door when Nero came in, carrying Sofia into his hospital room. He chuckled slightly at the sight of the younger man being reunited with his daughter after having been in the hospital for three days on antibiotics.
"I'm only bringin' her in here a couple of minutes to say hi to her daddy," Nero explained, raising his eyebrows slightly. "Hospital ain't no place for a healthy baby girl."
"Right, right - of course," Juice said, clearly distracted by the sight of the little girl, who was clambering around in Nero's arms and squealing as she tried to reach out for Daddy. Nero leaned over so that Sofia could give her father a long, sloppy kiss on the face. "Where's Dee?" Juice asked, reaching out and smoothing a hand over his daughter's hair, which was now fuller, a shiny, almost-black shade of brown like her mother's
"Photo shoot or somethin' out in San Francisco. Rich couple, doin' their wedding photos out at that tea garden," Nero shrugged. "Chinita's been makin' good money lately, all these weddings."
"Yeah. Yeah, she's doin' good," Juice said with a lopsided grin. "You know, she doesn't need to do any of this. She could retire and never work a day in her life, we'd still be good."
"You could retire too, ese," Nero said matter-of-factly. "Get outta Charming, settle down with the missus?"
"If only," Juice chuckled. "Me and Dee, I lost count of how many times of how many times we've gone back and forth on this whole gettin' out of Charming thing. We can never settle. Either I get pulled back in, or she does."
"She's a Mama," Nero shrugged, his calm expression not betraying the pang of sorrow he felt, knowing that this was what Jax and Tara had gone through as well. The saddest part of the story, in Nero's mind, was the fact that they were so close to making it, and the idea of Juice and Denise falling victim to the exact same fate was even more painful to accept as a possibility. "You gotta understand that, man. This little girl here, Deedee would turn the world upside down for her. She ain't gonna drop it until she thinks she can find a safe place for this little girl. Ain't about you, or how much she cares for you."
Juice knew that of all the people who could possibly give him a lecture about what had happened with Wendy, it was probably Nero who could get to him the most - because Nero was the voice of reason, more often than not. He was the moral compass. And he was right. Juice had succumbed to Wendy because he'd resented Denise, for not placing being a wife above all things. He'd thought that all the time that Denise spent with Jax was because being married to Juice didn't give her what she needed.
Everything Denise did was for Sofia - leaving Charming and staying in the cabin, running off and nearly murdering her own brother, working with Jax against Marks, all of the crazy things that Juice took so personally had never been about him. He shook his head and sighed, looking at his daughter in Nero's arms.
"Nero. Hey, man," Juice asked suddenly, his expression straddling a borderline between childlike hope and fear for the question that he was about to ask. "You... you think Dee and me can do this? Fix things?" he asked, his voice hoarse. Nero paused from rocking Sofia and turned to face him, sucking in his lower lip slightly and nodding to himself in thought.
"When it comes to you, I can't predict what that girl's gonna do," Nero shrugged honestly. "The night of that run out to Chico? She thought you were much worse off, I didn't even know she bolted in the middle of the night. Called me once she was five minutes away telling me to check up on Fifi because she was racin' off to see you."
"She did that?" Juice asked, his forehead wrinkling curiously. "For me?"
"You make the girl lose her head. When it comes to you, I won't put anythin' past her," Nero shrugged, pacing back and forth a few steps. "But if you and her work out, you gotta realize, she's a strong woman -"
"I know that -"
"Lemme finish," Nero said, shutting his eyes briefly and shaking his head. "You gotta realize, just because she's strong doesn't mean that she don't need you to take care of her."
Juice paused, inhaling through his nostrils slowly and looking at Nero holding his daughter. Nero knew that, Juice realized, from experience. "Try tellin' her that," he said with a forced laugh. "I've been tryin' to take care of her, and every time, she throws back in my face that she can do it all, and she can do it all alone. I've been tryin' -"
"If you love her, you keep tryin'," Nero said, raising his eyebrows. "You love her, you love this little girl. I know that. And for as long as you keep carin', you keep tryin'."
"You have five minutes, Charles" Denise said stiffly, staring at her brother across the table in the old diner in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was finally walking well on his own, had even been able to drive himself out to meet. She had been out on her way back from the shoot in the City when her phone had started ringing with a call from a blocked number, which she didn't answer. Instead, she let it go to voicemail and was surprised to hear Charles' voice when she checked the message asking her to meet him. Seated here with him, she glanced nervously out the window. "I always come armed, Charles. If you have anyone following you, you know I'm going to put a bullet in your head, right?"
"No one's following me, Mei," Charles explained quickly. "I just - I need something from you."
"That hardly surprises me."
"I want out," he said quietly, his face looking slightly pale as he made the request which Denise wasn't even entirely sure that she believed. She raised her eyebrows incredulously, and shook her head, to which Charles replied with a brief, frantic expression. "Mei, please -"
"Tell me about the Niners," she demanded suddenly, her jaw jutting out slightly in anger. "About Chico."
"August is acting through the Niners now because he can't touch you directly," Charles said quietly, leaning across the table towards his sister. "Because of your little stunt."
"And how did you know about SAMCRO and the Mayans going on that run?"
"Because when we were in Charming for the rally you threw, we bugged your husband's bike," Charles said, looking down at his hands, which now trembled slightly. "I told them to - I had to make sure they destroyed the bike so they couldn't track him anymore without anyone finding me out. I'm trying to help you -"
"Help me?" Denise asked, her voice lowered to a harsh whisper. "The Niners tried to run my husband off the road, he's in the hospital now - and you made that call, Charles?."
"Why do you care so much?" Charles asked, his brow furrowing as he shook his head in disbelief. "I know I'm not the only one who saw what he did with that little tart. The blonde -"
"My family is my business," she hissed. "And my family consists of my daughter and my husband. Period," she said, her eyes narrowed. "You stay out of this."
"Please help me, Mei," Charles said, and Denise flinched slightly when he reached out across the table for her and grabbed a hold of her hands. "Please. Getting in with Marks was a mistake -"
"It was a mistake because now you're a slave. You're his lackey, and you hate it," Denise said, feeling her own hands trembling at the way her brother begged. "Now, you have a good enough reason to want out. The fact that you were putting your own sister on the chopping block wasn't good enough, but now that you're in too deep, now you have a reason."
"Mei," he pleaded, bowing his head slightly so that his forehead touched their interwined hands. "There has to be something I can do. There has to be -"
Not a chance, Denise wanted to say. Not a chance in hell. The only thing stopping her was a nagging voice that reminded her of the letter Jax had given her from her father, that night over a year ago when his house had been set on fire.
A time will come that you may be able to bring your brother back to the light. If you find this chance, save him.
She couldn't listen to her father, she thought to herself. Her father had thought even Uncle Henry was not beyond redemption, and that was indiciation enough that perhaps his ideas of Charles still standing a chance of being one of the good guys was simply folly. But Denise loved her father, and once, she had loved Charles. She wouldn't have done all of this crazy shit if she hadn't loved him once. Maybe if there was one thing that she and Juice still had in common, it was that at the end of the day, they always harbored the hope of not losing brothers.
"You can start," Denise said suddenly, causing Charles to look up at her and see the expression on her face, the look in her eyes that he knew well to mean that the gears in her head were turning. "By bringing me Gemma Teller. Think about it."
Denise didn't waste any time waiting for a response from her brother yet, grabbing the camera bag that she had hung on the side of her chair and walking out to her car again. She couldn't honestly say that she knew what had brought on the idea, except that Gemma had been on her mind a great deal more than she wanted to admit, especially now that she was away from Juice like she had been for that year in the cabin. It was nothing against Nero. Nero had been her rock in these past few weeks since finding out about Juice and Wendy. But it was different. For an entire year, she and Gemma had gone through everything together, and it was just now that her absence was felt.
The way Denise felt about Gemma Teller, she realized as she drove all the way back home to Charming where Nero was hopefully at home with Sofia, was a strange mixture of deep hatred and resentment and, somewhere very deep, love. She wished that things were simple, but then again, they never were.
A familiar wave of apprehension washed over Denise when she finally pulled up in front of Nero's house again and saw that there were two bikes in front of the home. She inhaled sharply and got out of her car, her grip on the strap of her camera bag so tight that her knuckles were going white. Her apprehension turned to anger, however, when she heard raised voices inside the house even from outside the door when she knew that Sofia was inside. She reached for the door and pulled it open, ready to throw herself into whatever awaited her inside.
"She needs to go, she's his wife -"
"Hold up, hold up, brother," Bobby said, reaching one hand over and pushing Chibs back away from Nero, who was carrying Sofia. "We're just here to deliver the news about Juice -"
"What news?" Denise spoke up, putting her bag down at the door and slamming it shut behind her. "What's going on?"
"Boy was discharged a couple of hours ago, just brought him back home," Chibs said, removing his sunglasses and raising his eyebrows at her. "Sent him home with some pills."
"Antibiotics?"
"And pain pills, and he needs his family back with him," Chibs said, not entirely successful in suppressing the snarl in his voice. "Jesus Christ, you need to put aside your -"
"We didn't come here to tell you any of this, excuse him," Bobby said, grabbing Chibs by the back of his kutte and yanking him backward when he saw Chibs starting to step closer to Denise. "Just wanted to let you know he's alright, headed home. Know you still care. Chibs - we're out."
"No, we're not -"
"We're out," Bobby repeated, started to shove him towards the door. Denise stepped aside, and she and Chibs locked eyes for a few tense moments as they made their way out to their bikes. Once they were safely gone, Denise walked over to Nero, who was just putting Sofia back down on the carpet so she could practice walking more. She let out a string of babbles the instant her feet touched the ground, and she toddled over to her mother, wrapping her tiny arms around one of Denise's jeans-clad leg. Immediately, Denise felt the tension that had built up, first from her meeting with her brother and then from the brief but jarring encounter with Chibs, melt away as she crouched down to scoop her daughter up off of the floor.
"Hey baby," she said, leaning over and kissing Sofia's cheek joyously. "Did you have fun with Uncle Nero today?"
"Sure did," Nero chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest and nodding. "Went to see her daddy, did a few laps at the park."
"So Juice is doing better," Denise nodded with a tight-lipped smile and a nod. "That's... that's good."
"What you gonna do about it, mami?"
"Don't put me on the spot like this -"
"Ain't no one puttin' you on the spot," Nero said, shifting his weight. "Just a question. You stayin' here is like bein' in limbo. Eventually, you gotta go one way or the other."
Denise paused. She knew that - of course she knew. The fact of the matter was that she was afraid of making that call, afraid of committing one way or the other. Her face went scared - innocent, even child-like - as she managed to look Nero in the eye and sigh.
"You think Chibs is right?"
"I think that you only stop tryin' when you stop carin'," he repeated with a shrug. "And I know for a fact that you haven't stopped carin' about that idiot yet."
A/N's
I know, shorter chapter than usual, but I think it felt a little better to cut it off here!
Oh, Charles. Any time the guy gets involved in anything, it never bodes well for anyone. But things are gonna get fun from here on out, if your idea of fun is a lot of craziness and twists and turns. It breaks my heart a little bit to write Juice in these chapters because I obviously adore him as a character, and there's always a sense of deja vu when i have to write him trying to hard to make things right and having it not quite work yet. But at least he and Denise are at least thinking more about how much they want to work things out, thanks in large part to Nero.
The next chapter is going to see how Denise responds to Juice getting out of the hospital, and a little bit more about how Charles decides to respond to Denise's demands. Charles's intentions are going to be a fun wild card in chapters to come, so keep an eye on that one! I hope you guys all enjoyed this update, and I'll be plugging away at getting the next one all prettied up for you. Until then, cheers!