There was something discomforting about the fact that now, the Kwan family cabin out in Lovelock had become practically a SAMCRO hideout, when not long ago, it had been a place to get away from the club, a place that symbolized the life Juice and Denise wanted to live after SAMCRO. Cutting Jax and Wendy's honeymoon getaway short was certainly not something they wanted to do, but something that needed to be done nonetheless. Wendy was already staring with fear and worry at Denise, who was sporting a swollen face and a smattering of scrapes. The first order of business had been to get the kids to bed, which had taken a short while considering how riled up they had become in all the fuss - but a long car ride had at least helped speed up the process.

The guys were seated or leaning on furniture throughout the living room while Juice recounted the night's events to him. Denise's eyes flicked over all of the guys in the room. Juice, Jax, Tig, Happy, Brucey, Quinn, Ratboy - they were all supposed to be here to celebrate something, and instead, they were hiding. This wasn't the way things were supposed to be.

Denise, still shaken up by the night's events, couldn't process what was happening. No matter how ready she thought she was - how good of an ol' lady, how strong of a person - it was dawning on her that she was in deep. There were things she couldn't do, matters she couldn't take into her own hands, and that was perhaps the most unsettling realization she had come to tonight.

Jax's lip was curled with rage and disgust at the idea that on his wedding night of all times - a night that came to be with only a long time of thought, a great deal of doubt and allowing others to be hurt while he made up his mind - the Niners had tried to hurt his family. He gently, rhythmically beat the side of his fist on the coffee table in thought, unsure of his next move.

"You let 'em go?" Jax asked, shaking his head and looking around at his club, his brothers. "You just let 'em run off?"

"By the time I got to Deedee in the alley, they'd already scattered," Tig said with a despondent gesture of his arms. "Got her outta there first - they'd already gotten spooked."

"It was dark out," Happy pointed out, his arms crossed himself as he leaned against the mantelpiece. "You try catchin' a bunch of black guys wearin' black."

"Well, they answer for this - we go back home, we regroup, and we hit back fast -"

But before Jax could even say that they should pack up and go home, or suggest they hold an impromptu vote to make the decision official club business, there was a loud buzz. The room's inhabitants glanced around until Tig looked down and felt that it was coming from the burner in his pocket. He glanced at the number, then briefly at Denise.

"It's from the prepaid they jumped you for," Tig said before flipping the old phone open and, skipping over niceties, answered, "This better be good you pieces of -"

His voice cut off, and the sound of the voice on the other line replaced it. Tig's jaw clenched and he glanced over at Jax, holding the phone in his direction. "Marks," he said grimly. "For you, Prez."

Jax immediately leapt to his feet and snatched the phone from Tig's hand, while Tig moved over to crouch next to Wendy and Denise, who were sitting next to one another now and holding onto one another's hands as Jax listened to Marks over the phone, the look of disgust on his face deepening with every word from Marks. Tig crouched on front of the two women, clapping his hand over theirs. Denise blinked at him, taken aback by his sudden kindness and sentimentality towards them.

"You're a piece of shit," Jax snarled suddenly into the phone. "Give us two hours."

He snapped the phone shut and threw it angrily onto the sofa, letting out a string of curses that causes Wendy and Denise to grab onto one another more tightly in fear of the implications.

"Marks has Chibs and Bobby," he sneered angrily, and the air in the room was sudden changed, turned into a growing tangle of anger and restlessness for revenge. Even Juice, who until now had his gaze trained on Denise with the intent of watching over her, had suddenly shifted in demeanor, his attention now focused on Jax as they awaited their next move. "Says he has a deal to get 'em back," Jax continued. "Wants to discuss it man-to-man. Receiving yard at the Reno Airport, three hours."

"How'd they know we were here?" Brucey asked - and suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a loud, unrestrained sob from the corner when Denise was sitting. They turned to face her and saw her swollen face buried in her hands while she shook her head miserably.

"This..." she said, her voice muffled and shaking. "It's on me. They knew because of... because of..."

Her voice trailed off again when she realized the gravity of this moment, that it meant owning up - this was the only explanation she could find for what was happening, and the blame lay at her own feet for whatever happened to Chibs and Bobby. She had to take the blame.

"They know because of Gemma," she said, unable to look up at everyone. She heard the sound of a few footsteps and could tell already that it was Jax drawing nearer to her. She stiffened in fear.
"If this was Gemma, then why is it on you?" he asked, his voice guttural and suspicious. "Deedee -"

"Because she's in Charming," Denise said shrilly, looking up through red, teary eyes at Jax, her voice both furious and miserable as she resigned herself to fate. "Because I brought her there."

Jax's expression grew icy as his steps ceased in front of her, and the expression of everyone else in the room changed to one of utter shock and confusion at Denise's confession. Denise had brought Gemma back? Jax gave a bitter laugh, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling, and Denise felt herself shaking in anticipation of the reaction that was to come, her senses so steeled that it almost didn't surprise her when he suddenly lashed out, kicking the coffee table and flipping it onto its side.

"That wasn't your call, Denise," he hissed angrily, suddenly crouching down so his face was close to hers. "That's my mother, it wasn't your fucking call after what she did to my son -"

"I know," Denise cried miserably. "And I'm sorry - I thought - I thought -"

She inhaled sharply and shook her head, getting to her feet so she could properly face Jax, as though this were some sort of trial that everyone simply observed with a dumbfounded expression. "My brother was trying to make a deal, and I - I demanded Gemma. I thought it was a bluff but he delivered and I didn't - I wasn't -"

"You," Jax said, jabbing a finger into Denise's shoulder, "are an ol' lady. Do you get that?" he asked angrily. "Does that make fuckin' sense to you, Deedee? This ain't your club. You don't go rogue. You don't make these decisions because when you make calls on your own that's how you get yourself and other people killed - do you get that?" he repeated, staring her down with frigid rage before finally shaking his head. Denise couldn't bring herself to look up at anyone, but she knew by the fact that Juice didn't intervene when Jax spoke to her this way that he was disappointed. "We deal with this. You fuckin' stay here. Tig, you stay with 'em. We're ridin' out, right now -"

"Wait."

Denise felt a chill run through her when she heard Juice speak up finally, and Jax glanced over his shoulder at him. "Gimme a minute to talk to my wife," he said, his voice sounding weak, almost sickly. Denise looked down at the ground in shame as she realized, this was what it felt like to be the screw up. This was what it felt like to be the one in the wrong. She had grown so used to their praise, so complacent and confident that she was someone important in the greater scheme of things, that she'd forgotten. This wasn't her world. This wasn't the life she belonged in. Jax nodded his consent and gestured for the others to leave, while Juice nodded for Denise to follow him out the back door so they could talk, away from the prying eyes and ears of everyone else.

As Denise shut the door behind them, he shook his head in disbelief towards everything that they'd just learned. Denise reached out to try and touch his arm, but he quickly recoiled, his eyes piercing and full of anger.

"Gemma tried to kill you," he said, leaning his face close to hers. "She tried to kill our little girl and you brought her back?"

"I know, I fucked up," Denise said miserably - admittedly, Juice found some of his anger subsided at the sight of her beaten face. "I just - I don't know," she stammered, shaking her head. "All I want is for all of this to go away - I want things to be how they were -"

"It's not going away," Juice said, shaking his head and placing his hands on her shoulders. "You didn't even - you couldn't even tell me what the fuck you did? All that bullshit about no more secrets -"

"That was after I did this -"

"Oh, that makes it better, yeah," Juice sneered sardonically, causing Denise to pull away again in shame. He shook his head, staring at her. She was so broken, so ashamed of what she'd done, and Juice felt some of the anger inside him wane, knowing the feeling all too well. He knew what it meant to make mistakes and want so badly for things to go back to normal that everything seemed to avalanche, everything seemed to crash and burn. And Denise had been the person to help piece his life back together. Imperfect as she was, as many mistakes as she may have made, that was the person he had to be for her now.

"No more of this shit," Juice said sternly - and now, more than ever, Denise saw that Juice was no longer the broken person he had been a couple of years ago. He was a man with a mission to do right by his family, to protect them, and now was the time that it was finally for Denise to stop needing control, demanding control. "We're gonna figure this out, we're gonna do what we can, but you gotta swear to me, Dee. You gotta promise that this is the end - you can't go rogue, you can't do shit like this on your own. You gotta let me protect our family."

Denise felt her resolve collapsing, and just as she nodded her consent, she raised her hands to her face to conceal the tears rolling over her swollen cheeks. Juice stiffly leaned over and kissed her forehead before running off around the house to ride out with the others. Now alone on the back porch, Denise fell to her knees and finally let herself cry, the sobs wracking her chest as she kept her head buried in her hands. She remained there in the cold for a good while, she wasn't entirely sure how long, before she heard the sound of the door opening and footsteps coming out to join her.

She stared up in confusion when she felt a hand rest gently on her back, and she saw that Wendy had knelt down next to her, staring at the younger woman in concern. "Let's get you inside," she said quietly. "You'll freeze to death out here."

Denise nodded, and slowly, stiffly moved until she was back inside the living room of the cabin with Wendy and Tig - but to her confusion, neither of them looked at her with the same kind of anger or outrage on their faces. Her forehead wrinkled, and she shook her head, looking between them in disbelief.

"Jax ain't gonna hurt you, sweetheart," Tig spoke up. Denise, through swollen bleary eyes, blinked at him incredulously.

"Why are you being so nice to me right now?" she asked shakily. "They all hate me -"

"You think you're the only one who's ever fucked up?" Tig asked, moving over so that he was standing in front of her. "You're not. And I'm the last person with any right to nail a good person to a cross for one mistake. We deal with Gemma being back. We clean things up as much as we can -"

"Whatever happens to Chibs and Bobby is because of me -"

"Because of August fuckin' Marks - because of the mess that he and Pope and the Niners started with us," Tig said. "And a lot of that is on me. I ain't gonna put this on your shoulders, sweetheart. This is bigger than you."

Denise drew a shuddering breath. She knew this should have been some small comfort, at least. It should have put things into perspective. SAMCRO retaliated often. They drew blood often. But they also forgave often. With all the stories she'd heard, all the things she knew about what SAMCRO had been before she'd met any of them, she knew that it should have put everything in perspective. She pulled away from both Tig and Wendy and hurried upstairs to where the kids were sleeping. After they heard her close the bedroom door behind her, Tig and Wendy shared a glance.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Wendy asked, crossing her arms over herself. Tig ran his hands over his face and through his hair, looking upwards at the high wood beams in the ceiling as he mulled over the answer.

"I don't know," he said. "I've known since day one, she plays tough because she has to but at the end of the day, she's a kid. She's a good kid who took a few shooting lessons, had a kid, and got stuck in a world that's too big for her. They put too much on her."

Wendy sighed, sitting down on the sofa and burying her head in her hands. She agreed, of course, but not happily. Denise was trapped in a situation she wasn't ready for. They all were.

A/N's

And this is where things start to really go downhill for everybody. I know that Jax/Wendy is a really contentious ship, and I personally never shipped them either, but it was a necessary piece to set up in order to knock all the dominos down in the end.

Anyway, thank you for all of your reviews - I got a lot this time, so it was really exciting for me! I'll keep this author's note short and sweet because it hopefully shouldn't be long before the next chapter is posted. Until then, cheers!