Denise would've been happiest of all if she never had to see the inside of a hospital again - she would've been more than happy to recover in the quiet of home and ride it out, but because of her 'complex history', it was decided after a routine check at the emergency room to admit her to the hospital again for observation. She was sedated for a good while to allow her to rest, and she was just now coming to.
Her eyes opened and she forced herself to sit up in bed. A glance around the room confirmed that Juice's things were inside, but he wasn't. Next, she picked up the faint murmuring outside of the room that meant talking was happening. When it came to the boys of SAMCRO, talking was either very bad or much worse. She sat and strained to listen, but through a mixture of lingering fatigue and the distraction of the buzz of other hospital equipment, she couldn't make out anything of substance. The murmuring finally died down at the sound of a 'ding' - the elevator door.
"We came as soon as we heard," came the sound of a feminine voice outside. Lila. "Nero turned the car around. He's outside explaining to the boys what's going on - is it true?"
"Yeah," Jax's voice replied, audibly catching in his throat. "All of it."
"Jesus," Wendy's voice piped in. "I'm so sorry Jax. Gemma -"
"I'm good," Jax interrupted. "I'm gonna talk to Nero outside. Deedee's in the room."
Denise felt her chest tighten in anticipation at what this meant - she knew that Jax was in pain, but she was overwhelmed by the fact that Lila and Wendy were around. She felt the tightness in her chest grow when Juice's voice broke through the tense silence.
"My baby girl," he said in a half-sob, and knowing that Juice and baby Sofia had already been reunited, Denise resisted the urge to pull the IV line out of her arm to find them right away. Her family was here. They were together. "Your ma and I thought we were never gonna see you again."
"Mama! Dada!" Sofia's voice rang through the hospital hallway, and Denise let out a sob of her own, feeling tears rolling warm on her cheeks. Finally, all of what had just happened seemed real. They had suffered dear and deep losses but they had won. It was perhaps finally over. When Juice finally turned the corner holding their daughter in his arms and paused in surprise to see Denise awake, the moment felt like it moved in slow motion - a moment she thought would likely never come, and needed to draw out these last few moments before coming to fruition.
They were a family. They were together. They had thought there would be no more moments like this, yet here they were. Denise choked back another sob and extended her arms to beckon her husband and her daughter forward. Juice willingly obliged, hurrying towards his wife's bedside, using his foot to drag the chair closer and sitting in the seat, leaning forward so Denise could wrap her arms around them both.
"Mama! Dada!" Sofia repeated joyously, sandwiched between both of her parents who were both in tears, shaking and clinging tightly to one another. The little girl frowned slightly and reached up towards the bandage right near Denise's hairline. "Booboo? Mama got booboo?"
Denise pulled back and laughed tearfully, shaking her head. "It's just a little booboo. Mama's okay, Fifi. Mama's okay."
She leaned in to squeeze her family tightly yet again, but now finally noticed another minor detail that she hadn't immediately seen - Juice was still wearing his kutte. This scene felt so familiar - it had played out before, and suddenly, it felt like being sucked into a vacuum as she began to suspect it could be happening again. Her face wrinkled slightly in confusion as her gaze flicked from the garment up to his face. "Babe?" she asked. "What are you -"
"Lemme explain," Juice said, shifting and allowing Sofia to sit on the bed next to Denise. His face, however, was not the expression of guilt that Denise would have expected, but rather a small, nervous smile. "I'm out. Member in good standing."
"What?"
"We're free. I don't need to black out my ink. I don't need to hide," Juice said, shaking his head as though it still shocked him as well. "I'm officially retired. We got what we wanted, babe. We're -"
"How do you know?" Denise asked, almost not wanting to hear the good news just in case it wasn't true. "Juice. Baby," she said with a sigh and a shake of her head. "Are you sure? We don't know what this is. How can you be sure -"
"My last act as president. Just passed the vote."
Now, Jax appeared in the doorway, surrounded by a handful of others, including a red-eyed Nero, and clearly tearful Abel and Thomas, the sight of whom wiped the smile from even Juice and Denise's faces, knowing the great loss the boys must be feeling right now. Denise noticed, however, that Jax's kutte no longer bore the president's patch, instead left with a bare area of leather, darker and less weather-worn than the rest. Her breath again seemed to catch in her chest.
"I'm steppin' down. I'm out," he said in a voice that wavered between relief and defeat. He reached out and gently ruffled his older son's hair, shutting his eyes and inhaling deeply through his nostrils before continuing. "Disappearing. Doing right by my family somehow," he shrugged. "Just like you've been tryin' to for a while now, Deedee. It's time."
The echo of the words, it's time - the words Gemma had spoken near the end - brought on a new wave of tears in Denise, who coudn't process whether she was joyous or grieving in this moment. Instinctively feeling the intensity of her mother's emotions, Sofia scooted and squirmed in the hospital bed until she could hug her mother tightly, nestling closely into her midsection. Denise leaned forward and planted a kiss in her daughter's hair before looking back up at Jax.
"Take your family, Deedee," Jax said with a weak smile in the direction of the woman he regarded as perhaps one of his truest friends. "Go anywhere. Don't be scared anymore. You deserved your freedom a long time ago and you still came back for us. You and Juice deserve this."
"Jax," Denise said, her shoulders drooping and tears still flowing openly down her cheeks. "What's going to happen to you?"
"I'm taking my family. Making sense of things," he said, looking between Wendy and his boys. "From what I hear, Grandpa Nero's got a nice farm he's been working on that could use a half-decent mechanic. We'll probably start there."
Jax and Nero shared a glance, and the older man reached out and clapped a hand on Jax's back. Denise allowed a small smile to flash on her tearful face, and Juice snaked an arm around her shoulders.
"You take care of that family of yours, brother," Jax said, looking Jax in the eye. "They're a handful."
"Don't I know it, brother," Juice chuckled tearfully. "But hell if I ain't glad it's my hands they're fillin'. You take care of yours too."
"Why is everyone talking like that?" Abel finally spoke up, looking between everyone in mild confusion. "We're gonna see 'em again, aren't we?"
There was a brief silence, and the glances shared came to share a sad understanding that the answer to that question was not simple. No one knew what their separate lives out outside of SAMCRO were supposed to look like, or if they had a place in one another's lives moving forward.
"If we're supposed to, we will, honey," Wendy supplied, crouching down and squeezing one of Abel's hands with both of hers - and there was a solemn sense of assent throughout the room that this was the best answer any of them could offer. "How about you go over and give Aunt Deedee a 'bye-bye for now' hug and a kiss, okay?"
"Okay..."
Abel slowly walked across the room and clambered up on the other side of the hospital bed, reaching out and giving Denise a hug, nestling into her side as well. Denise realized that this was unexpectedly one of the hardest goodbyes she'd had to say. For a time, she had come to think of Abel like one of her own, and the idea of goodbye to SAMCRO being goodbye to him as well finally hit her. This was perhaps really, truly the end of a life that she resented and clung to desperately at the same time. She loved them all. This was her family.
"Bye bye for now," he said, planting a kiss on Denise's cheek and then on Sofia's before scurrying back to Wendy - to his Mommy - tightly hugging her around her midsection. The adults spared one more set of glances at one another, silently acknowledging that this could very well be the last time the saw each other. For a very long time. Forever.
"Bye for now," Jax repeated with a throaty chuckle before bowing his head and leading his family out of the room.
Denise felt a strange sense of confusion and disorientation in the sudden calm that followed Jax's departure - no one else seemed to be lingering outside. No one else seemed as though they wanted to draw out a goodbye. It was simply time to walk away - to disappear, like they had long planned, and yet the finality of it was something for which neither Juice nor Denise felt prepared. It felt strangely wrong to feel joy, even in the light of the losses suffered so recently, yet here they were.
"Where do we start?" Denise laughed quietly, shaking her head. Sofia, apparently tired, had nestled in next to her mother in the tiny hospital bed and started sucking on her thumb, falling quickly into a state of slumber. For once, Denise had no idea what their next steps should be. They could simply go anywhere. They didn't have to stay in Charming. They didn't have to run away from it.
"Home," Juice said with a smirk. Denise's brow furrowed slightly as she shifted slightly in bed to look at him, careful not to disturb Sofia.
"And where's that?"
"Wherever you are," he shrugged, wrapping an arm tightly around her shoulders. "Wherever we are, together."
And finally, Denise allowed herself a smile of relief at the fact that for the first time, she and her family could just simply be.
THE END
A/N
And that's all she wrote! This is so, so long overdue and I'm sorry it took to so long to bring a little closure to this story, I've been swept up in a lot of things, life has been a little crazy and I'm just kind of climbing out of a little bit of a rough patch. I'm still considering one day actually posting the final part of this trilogy with Juice/Denise (which I have started but nowhere near finished planning out), but I'm putting that on hold for now - in the meantime, please stay tuned because it is never out of the question. I'm hoping to get back in action and continue on Flown South soon as well, and the next update for it is already in progress.
But in the meantime, thank you all of you for your love and support for this story. I don't think this is truly the end, I think that writing Juice and Denise is something I may still circle back to. Until the next update somewhere out there, cheers!