Prepare for more sobs! :)
"Velvet!"
"Oh God, Velvet!"
"Lila! Take the children, now . . . Oh God, look at the blood! Jax!"
"Oh God, Velvet baby, talk to me! Oh Holy Jesus, Chibs, mom, look what happened to her! Velvet talk to me!"
"Velvet . . ." Lila spoke gently, her soft voice slowly breaking through the fogginess and blackness that was Velvet's mind. "Please, come back to us, Velvet, honey . . . look at me, talk to me!"
Velvet slowly opened her eyes and her body was immediately hit with wave after wave of excruciating pain. Her groin felt like it had been hit several times with a sledgehammer, and her head felt like it had been split open by Thor's hammer. She had heard her best friend's voice, but she had wanted to scream for her to leave her alone. Her body, the body that had belonged to Jax alone, had been violated, broken. He would never want to touch her again. She would always be tainted in his eyes, soiled. In one moment, one excruciatingly slow moment, her life had been torn apart, shard by shard. She was angry, angry at the bastard who had done this, angry at Jax, angry at the whole fucking world. She wanted to wash, to scrub away the dirt, the filth, everything, in a scalding hot shower.
"Velvet . . ." Lila spoke again, gentler, kinder as she brushed a lock of her black hair out of her eyes. They were alone, Velvet laying in her and Jax's bed, the olive colored covers pulled up to her chin. Lila was sitting on her side of the bed, her honey blonde hair shining in the early evening sunlight and her face fraught with nothing but worry.
Velvet turned slowly turned her face from the wall and stared into her friend's eyes. Lila knew. Lila knew the hurt, the humiliation, the pain, the anguish, the fear that went along with being raped.
Lila knew.
"I don't want to talk about it . . ." Velvet's voice shook, but it was firm. They stayed like that for a few moments, the air between them awkward and heavy, before Velvet shook her head and let out a sob. "Lila . . . why did this happen tome?"
Lila immediately reached out gently and took Velvet's hand once again in hers, and when she did not pull away, Lila pulled her up and drew her into an embrace. Velvet clung to her best friend, where she buried her face into Lila's shoulder and sobbed with the ferocity of one who had nothing else to lose.
"Jax . . ." Jax turned around when he heard Lila's soft voice call his name from across the kitchen counter. He had not heard the bedroom door open or had seen Lila slip silently into the hallway and walk into the kitchen, where he was trying to drown his sorrows in a pot of Starbucks coffee and imported Russian vodka.
Lila gently placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face her. He was hurt, wounded and angry, but she knew that she needed to divulge to him what she had never told another living soul. After sitting with Velvet for a very long time, until the sun had long since disappeared below the horizon, allowing her friend to sob every held-back tear she possessed within her body, she had finally coaxed her friend into taking a quick shower with her help before putting on fresh, clean pyjamas and helping her back into bed. Velvet had not spoken anything of what had happened, however, but Lila knew she would eventually. When she would, it would be like a dam breaking. She would be able to hold nothing back.
"How is she, Lila?" Jax's voice trembled and Lila immediately understood that right now, he was hurting just as much as Velvet was. He was scared inside, like a little boy who had lost his mother and had no one else left in the world to take care of him. Velvet was his soul, his heart, the very air he breathed, and seeing her like this tormented him just as much as it was tormenting her. She noticed his puffy red eyes and smiled a small smile when she realized that he had been crying too.
"Jax, I know what Velvet is going through; I know the pain, the fear, all of it. Gemma does too. This isn't just going to go away and we can't pretend that it never happened. She is going to need you now more than ever . . . more than anyone else, she needs you."
"She shrank back from me as if I were the fucker who did it!" His eyes flashed with anger at her words, and his voice became heavy with frustrated tears again.
"Jax, listen! When Georgie . . . when he . . ." Lila breathed in deeply and slowly let it out, her eyes moving to the floor for a moment. Even now, it still hurt to talk about it. "When he forced himself onto me, I wanted to kill him . . . I almost did. I held a pistol to his head, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I was afraid, and even now I still have nightmares, I still jump at noises in the night, but I trust Opie, I feel safe with him, I know that he would rather die than to see harm come to me like that again."
"Will she ever trust me again, though?" Jax stared into her face, searching it desperately for the answers he craved.
"Listen to her . . . don't talk, just listen. She's afraid Jax, she's terrified. She needs your reassurance that you love her, she needs to know that she is free to talk about it . . . even if it tears you up inside to hear it."
"I failed her, Lila . . . I should have been here with her!" His body shook then as he forced himself to hold back tears. "I promised her that nothing like this would ever happen to her again, that she would be safe with me, but now . . . now she must think that I betrayed her."
"You did not fail her, Jax, you need to be strong for her!" Lila gave him a comforting smile before she squeezed his hand. "Go to her Jax . . ." Lila told him softly, "But let her reach for you! That's important! Now, I gotta get home to Opie and the kids, call me if you need me for whatever reason, I don't care! I'll be here as fast as I can, any hour, day or night!"
Jax watched listlessly as Lila grabbed her keys and purse and walked down the hallway to the front door. He stayed in front of the counter for another long while until he finally found the courage to finally walk down the hall and enter their bedroom.
The quiet ticking of the bedside clock was the only sound that greeted his ears in the softly lit room. Velvet's outline was visible under the blankets, and as desperately as he wanted to climb under them and hold her, he heeded Lila's words like they were from the Bible. Instead, he dragged a chair to the side of the bed and sat down.
Velvet had heard the door to the room open and her heart began to beat faster as she heard Jax's steady, even breaths and his heavy, comforting footfalls. Had he come to cut off their engagement? To tell her how much she disgusted him now? Her body trembled in fear. She desperately wanted him, needed him, but she could not bear the thought of him touching her. Touching such soiled flesh after the birth of their child.
She could feel his presence in the room, but still, he said nothing. She opened her eyes, turned her head and saw him sitting on a chair beside the bed. His eyes were fixed on her. They where filled with anger, sorrow, distress, they were filled with love. That emotion alone floored her. How could he still love her? She was a ruined woman.
She wanted to tell him, wanted to pour out to him every little detail and emotion, but would he listen? She wasn't sure.
Her mind flashed back to the rape, still so shockingly vivid, and she closed her eyes tight, wanting to shut it out, but she couldn't. It kept forcing itself back into her thoughts, kicking down doors, obliterating barriers until there was nothing left with to block the pain and images. The sounds and guilt she felt at passing out and leaving her sons alone and scared.
Jax was still there, though. still silent. What was he waiting for? She wanted him to leave her alone, but she thought that if he left, she would die.
"Why are you here?" She finally whispered to him. Her voice sounded old and unused.
"Because you are my fiancé, my future wife, and the mother of my children . . . I love you, Velvet . . . I always will." He answered her with pain evident in his voice.
"How can you love me after this? How can you love me after what Kurt done to me? After what our children saw occur?" Tears filled her eyes and voice then, and Jax wanted to cry too at the look in her eyes as those words left her mouth. The agony, the pain, the guilt.
"My love for you will never change, Velvet. Never." Jax wanted to go to her, to hold her, but Lila was right. Velvet needed to feel that she was in control, that she was not powerless. "We can heal Abel, we can heal you. It'll take time, but we can do it! There is still hope!"
"How can you say that? I am ruined, soiled!" She choked out, anger starting to get into her voice.
"No!" Jax told her with deep conviction, with firmness. "You are not." He wanted her to tell him where Kurt was, and he wanted to tear him apart into pieces and feed them to Tig's Doberman dogs. He lifted his gaze from the floor and stared deep into Velvet's eyes, but her hands flew to her face.
"Don't look at me, Jax!" She wept then, and buried her face into the pillow. "I'm not worthy of you."
Jax turned away his head in anguish. He rubbed his hand across his face and felt like crying himself. It tore at his heart that she had been so brutally violated again, but it did not alter how he felt about her or how he saw her. She was his future wife, his lover, his best friend, the mother of his children, and he would never let her go. Never again.
Jax got down to his knees on the floor beside her, and moved a lock of her hair out of her face. She gradually took her hands away, and was shocked to see that Jax had tears going down his cheeks as well.
"You tell me where that bastard is . . . where I can find him or find out where I can find him . . . and I swear to God, Velvet, that I will bring you his head, dick and balls on a silver platter!" He told her shakily, firmly, his voice and eyes filled with tears. Velvet bit down on her bottom lip.
"What if I don't know . . ." Jax nodded slowly.
"Don't worry then, baby . . . I'll find the bastard."