"Where is she?"

"Jax, she feels terrible, maybe you should stay away from her for a while -"

"Wendy," he said sharply, in no mood to not have his way. The rest of the guys had just returned to the cabin after their discussion with Marks, but it was very clear that neither Chibs nor Bobby was with them. "I need to talk to her."

Wendy paused, glancing at the stairs momentarily and taking a breath before nodding in resignation. "I'll go get her."

Jax crossed his arms and paced back and forth over the open floor as Wendy went upstairs to where the kids were sleeping; the rest of the club was taking up their former places on the chairs and furniture throughout the room, their expressions filled with dread. Denise, catching sight of all of them as she emerged from the bedroom and started down the stairs while Wendy remained upstairs with the kids, felt her pulse racing, her body tensing as she drew nearer and nearer to Jax until she was standing right in front of him. There were a few tense moments of silence, but eventually, he leaned over, resting one hand on the curve of her neck and pressing a familial kiss onto the side of her head. Denise again stared at him in confusion.

"You know I love you. You're family. You're one of my best friends," Jax began stiffly, dropping his hands to his sides. "I appreciate everything you've done for me and my boys - but you need to know your place. You don't know everything. You don't know better than everyone on how to handle all of this -"

"I understand -"

"You never do this shit again," he interrupted, raising his eyebrows and inclining his head closer to hers. "Do you get that?"

Denise drew a quivering breath, and internally wondered why this apparent forgiveness gave her no sense of relief. Instead, her brow wrinkled, and she shook her head incredulously at Jax as though demanding some type of explanation why she was being forgiven so easily. He gnawed gently on his inner lip and breathed so hard that his nostrils flared while he stared at the young woman in front of him. He forgot that at times - she was young. She was twenty-six. She was reckless. And more than anything else, whatever she did wrong, she didn't deserve to bear a burden that wasn't hers.

"This isn't on you," Jax said simply. "The intel didn't come from Gemma. It came from Harvey Mulligan -"

"Harvey?" Denise spat in outrage, her face contorting unprettily. Her gaze flicked over to her husband, and she felt her stomach tighten at the blank expression on Juice's face. He had been right all along to have misgivings about Harvey after all. Harvey had told August Marks where they would be, but -

"He called your phone, tried to invite you to dinner," Jax said sternly. "That's how he found out where the Niners could corner us."

"Harvey and I don't talk anymore," Denise said, shaking her head fervently, her gaze drifting towards Juice in worry, knowing that he never reacted well to Harvey Mulligan being even marginally connected to them. "I never told him anything."

"No, I know you didn't," Jax said, shaking his head. "Wendy did. Harvey got the intel from her, pretendin' to be your good ol' pal and passed it onto his new boss."

"Flick was his younger brother," Juice finally supplied, his arms now crossed over his chest as well. Denise's jaw hung open slightly, and she looked back and forth between Jax and Juice, unable to supply any response to what she was hearing. There was a creak behind them, and Denise turned to find Wendy upstairs, just within earshot, carrying a slowly waking Sofia and looking on with an apologetic expression. And Denise suddenly understood - she and Wendy were ol' ladies now. They had boundaries, but they also had the benefit of the doubt. They had their place in the club, and the club needed them, but it wasn't their club.

"So Harvey's beef with us runs deeper than his little Asian fetish crush on you," Jax said. "That's why he landed your friend in the hospital, to see what she knew -"

"Melissa?" Denise asked, her expression now fully shifted from anger to worry. As though Chibs and Bobby's unknown fate was not enough cause for pain? "Where is -"

"She's in a coma, ICU in Sanwa General. But you gotta stay away from her," Jax said. "That's not what we've gotta deal with right now, alright?"

"Deal with what?" Denise said shrilly, shaking her head. "Jax, what's -"

"Marks says we have twenty-four hours to choose," Jax said. Before he could continue, clearly distraught, he clenched his jaw and inhaled hard through his nostrils. "We get one of 'em back. Chibs or Bobby."

Denise felt her knees grow weak upon hearing it, and she had to back up towards the sofa and let herself fall into one of the seats and she shook her head in disbelief. This was SAMCRO. This was how they did business. Jax, on the other hand, moved away from where Denise was sitting and met Wendy, who had finally come down the stairs. He gave her a brief kiss before nodding for her to join Denise over on the sofa. Then, he gestured for the rest of the guys to gather around the wooden dinner table in the dining area.

"I want 'em both home safe," Jax said, his face twisted into a sneer. "You all know that. You know that if it was in my power, I would bring 'em both back. And we're gonna try. But if it all goes to shit, we can't wait. We need to bring it to a vote now - who are we gonna choose to save if it comes down to that?"

The air in the circle of club brothers around the table was electric as it dawned on each of them that they had to choose, and that whoever wasn't chosen, his blood was fully on his brothers' hands. Jax allowed only a few moments of silent contemplation before he spoke up again. "I choose Bobby."

"Chibs."

Juice, situated closest to Jax's left side, had spoken up immediately, and in an instant, it was clear that the battle lines had been drawn. There would be no unanimous vote. Majority rule.

Chibs.

Bobby.

Bobby.

Chibs.

Finally, the vote arrived at the last member to cast his decision - Happy Lowman. His nostrils flared when he realized that it was tied, and in essence, the decision rested on his shoulders. The final vote would decide. He glanced around the circle of men, his lips tight again his teeth. Now, even Wendy and Denise had looked over, their hands intertwined with one another's as they realized what was happening.

But instead of casting a vote, of damning a brother to death, Happy wordlessly walked away from the table, storming across the room and out the back door of the cabin, leaving the room to erupt in a flurry of incredulous gasps, groans, and curses.

Jax slapped his palm down loudly on the table, effectively silencing the uproar, and glanced around at everyone. "It's a tie," he said, shaking his head. "No majority -"

"Bullshit," Tig said, leaning forward onto the table himself and staring back at Jax. "We can't let 'em both die, someone's gotta swing -"

"No," Jax sneered. "The votes stand."

There was a silence, and Jax looked upward and around the room as though seekeing some sort of divine intervention, scanning around until he rested on the two figures seated on the couch, staring on in horror.

"We give the ol' ladies a vote. They gotta agree, counts as one -"

"You can't do that, they ain't members," Tig hissed. "You can put this on a couple of ol' ladies, you just told 'em they gotta know their place -"

"And we need them now," Jax said, his voice low and threatening as he stared Tig down across the table. His gaze on Tig, who had dared not to follow his vote at the table, was especially dark. The tendons in Juice's neck tensed and grew visible when he looked over at his wife, realizing that she was still being pulled into this. Jax didn't take the blood onto his own hands. He left it for everyone else to take. "Unless any of you wanna go outside and rough up Hap for his vote, we got no choice. You said it yourself, we can't just let 'em both die. Unless the table would vote for two dead brothers, this is all we got."

There was no voice of dissent, and Jax, with his shoulders back and his gait determined, crossed the room back to the women on the couch who both looked sick and fearful at the prospect of being responsible for this decision. "Sun up should be in about two hours. You have until then to make your choice."

And Jax took off, walking upstairs to be with his sons for the first time all night, leaving the girls, Sofia, and the rest of the club in the living room to deal with the aftermath. Denise and Wendy looked at one another and immediately realized the position that they had been put into. They both needed to choose the same person in order to break the stalemate. One of them was going to need to vote against her husband.

"Leave 'em alone," Tig barked to the others, looking at Juice especially, who was staring purposefully at his wife with the clear intention of trying to speak with her. "Let 'em talk."

Chibs groaned and raised his arm to block the light from a window away from his face, feeling his head throbbing with violent vengeance as he realized that he'd been drugged. He remembered someone shooting the tires of his bike out from under him, rolling onto the road, and being grabbed. He remembered the needle stabbing into his neck. With a bitter sneer, he lamented the fact that a proper Scotsman couldn't take a few milligrams of something to a vein and come out unscathed.

He managed to gradually force his eyes open, noting his damp, unfamiliar surroundings. It was dank, and the air was musty. The limited amount of light revealed that it was a small space, the size of a shed or a storage locker. But more importantly, the light revealed that he wasn't alone.

"I shouldn't fuckin' known it'd be you, Ally," he spat, catching sight of the woman in front of him, who stared at him in silence. Projecting as much strength as he could in spite of the fact that he felt like he'd just been struck across the head, he got to his feet so that this woman - this traitorous hag - wouldn't look down at him. Althea Jarry shuddered in response to the revulsion in his voice. "What is this? Marks promise that you get me as a prize to hang on your mantelpiece?"

"I know you think what happened between us was a mistake," Jarry said through clenched teeth, maintaining crossed arms and a reaosnable distance. "But it was real for me, Filip."

Jarry paused, hoping he would say something, that he would betray some sort of lingering concern for her or for how she felt. She had pushed every ounce of pain she felt into the admission. Just hear it, she mentally pleaded. Just see it. Chibs, however, remained stoic and unaffected by her revelation, by the feelings she had shared. Jarry's shoulders drooped before she continued speaking.

"The Niners are holding Bobby in another location," she said vaguely. "If August contacts me and I don't answer, Bobby Munson is dead."

"Useless information, sweetheart," Chibs spat. "You're armed, I'm not."

"He's cutting a deal with SAMCRO," she continued. "They get either you or Bobby. They have until tomorrow night to choose."

Chibs let out a bitter chuckle, knowing full well that between himself and Bobby, he had more slights against Jackson Teller. He was as good as dead, and Jarry was just the enforcer. It was a cruel trick, making sure he died at the hands of a woman he might have once nearly felt something for. At this juncture, however, Jarry dared to take a few steps closer to him, looking him square in the eye.

"If they choose Bobby, I'll find a way to let you go," she supplied. "Filip, I'm not going to kill you." She tried to reach out for Chibs' arm, but found that he yanked it away. Althea had hoped that the offer would be her olive branch, that he would be grateful, but instead he scoffed at her suggestion, spit harshly at her feet.

"You think I don't know what this is? This isn't for me," he sneered. "This is for you. For your conscience. For you to feel like the benevolent good cop even though you've sold Marks your soul and God knows what other part of you -"

He was cut off by Jarry's palm striking him hard across the face at the suggestion that she was some kind of concubine to Marks. She stared Chibs down hard, only to find him chuckling darkly as he raised his hand to brush against the side of his face that she'd just slapped. Then, in a swift movement, even in the dim light, he moved forward, grabbed a hold of both of her wrists, and shoved her to the ground.

"I think you've forgotten how you and I work," he sneered. When it came to Althea Jarry, Chibs gave what he got because in a strange way, he respected her back then. He didn't infantilize her. If she struck him, he struck back because she was an equal - not weaker, not a subordinate. The Althea Jarry he knew, the Ally he'd shared a bed with, was perhaps not always on his side, but always a person of unyielding principle. He stepped forward and looked at the woman in front of him on the ground, and he wondered if any of the woman he respected was left in the Althea Jarry locked in this room with him. BUt to him, the conclusion was easy to arrive upon. "I would rather take a bullet to the head tonight than wake another day knowing I owe my life to a traitorous wench like you."

A/N's

Alright, guys, here we go! It was a little strange to write Jarry again, because I have recently been watching Parks and Recreation on Netflix, and Annabeth Gish guest stars as one of the character's sister. Very un-Jarry. But anyway, this is going to be a long, bumpy road. The next chapter, we'll get to see the decision the women come to, and the beginning of how things play out.

So, hang on tight and enjoy the ride! As always, your feedback always makes me smile. I know you're all dying to learn what happens to Bobby and Chibs, and that is coming soon. Until next update, cheers!