Okay, I am terribly sorry that I have not updated in ages, but due to many PM's and dogging nightmares over how I should upload this story, I finally am :)

Kurt Darby ducked down again as an office chair went whizzing over his head. He stood back up, only to see his father standing on the other side of his office, standing red-faced and beyond furious, his meaty hands curling into fists at his sides. His eyes were wide with livid fury and he shook his head, a finger pointing at him dangerously.

"You little shit! If you weren't my only son, I would impale you on a white-hot poker, ass first!" He spat out through gritted teeth and Kurt pursed his lips in a tight smile.

"Why don't you?"

Earnest Darby let out another inhuman roar of anger as he toppled over his desk. Kurt flinched but held his ground. He learned early in his life that when confronted by the raging bull that was his father, that you stood your ground or prepare yourself for the ass-beating of your life!

"Do you know how much retribution the Sons are asking for?" He demanded. "Do you know how much blood they're demanding to be shed? For Christ's sake Kurt, Jax is foaming at the mouth for your head!"

"Fuckin' bring it! I'll teach that mutt something he's never learned-!"

Kurt was abruptly cut off when his father marched angrily over to him, grabbed the back of his neck like a dog would her pup, and pulled him to him. They were so close Kurt could smell the garlic on Earnest Darby's breath from lunch.

"You never mess with a Teller when it comes to their family, Kurt! Jax would rip you open from neck to navel and then bathe in your blood – he would wash his balls with your hair, and then Velvet would do the same! You know this damn good and well!"

Kurt faltered then, his eyes adopting an almost scared, little boy look to them when he realized, with shocking clarity, that his father's words were true. Earnest Darby calmed down a little and released his son as this look, his muscles slowly unknotting from their anger and tension.

"Now what, Kurt . . . in your ever-loving mind, made you rape Velvet Teller?" He demanded, his voice quieter, calmer, but the anger still hungered on the outreaches of his eyes, a constant reminder that the wrong words could set him off again. Kurt swallowed heavily and shrugged.

"I was blinded by pain . . . by anger that she had chosen him over me, especially after what went down in Funtown . . ." Kurt trailed off, suddenly weary, and Earnest Darby scoffed as he turned around and moved over to the bottle of Jack sitting on the windowsill that had miraculously been spared his raging.

"So you decided to get your dick wet? You could have just called a whore! Any whore would have done – even that one carrying your squalling brat! But no, you had to get the one whore that was above you – the one whore you knew you could never get again – Velvet, fuckin' Telford, Teller!" Earnest Darby shook his head again as he gazed at the dark bottle in his hand. "Actually, I take that back . . . I can't call Velvet a whore, not anymore . . . she's about to be married, got a few kids . . . she's changed her entire life around – I don't have the heart to call her a whore anymore!"

Kurt sighed and rubbed his face with his hands . . . the hands that had so recently held down the struggling, strong body of the woman he used to love with all his heart.

"Da, I don't know what was wrong with me! I just . . . I love her so much, and -"

Kurt was interrupted again by Earnest Darby turning around and pointing another finger at him, his anger returning on swift wings.

"Don't you dare bare your heart to me, boy, unless you would have me rip it out!" He spat at him before he turned around, shaking his head. ". . . especially after the shit that just went down thanks to you!"

Kurt stood there for a moment, feeling absolutely helpless. He stood there, feeling the exact same way he had when him, Trixie and Nadia were kids and he would lunge in front of Earnest Darby's silver and gold ringed hand or his mother's thin, drunken one – taking the slaps that were meant for one of his sisters. His life had been Hell growing up . . . absolute fucking Hell.

But then Velvet walked in the picture, and it was like everything suddenly cleared up. The dark clouds parted at her words, and with every soft caress of her fingers sweeping aside his dirty blonde hair, she released rays of sunshine into his dark little world.

He had loved her so much! Even when he figured out she was the daughter of the Sons of Anarchy field medic and a woman so damn unachievable, it was amazing she had even been conceived in the first place – he still loved her!

Oh God, what had he done?

Kurt felt tears brim up in his eyes. He hadn't cried in so long . . . not since he was a kid.

"Oh God, da, what do I do?" He asked, his hands flying to his mouth, and Earnest Darby grinned and snorted out a laugh as he took another swig from the bottle of Jack in his hand.

"You're actually asking me what to do for once? Okay, here's some advice! Get on your knees – but first kiss your ass goodbye – and pray to God, that Jax Teller takes pity on you and makes your death quick and painless!" Kurt felt a weight descend into his stomach that told him his father was most likely speaking the truth. Earnest Darby let out another scoff, though. "But something tells me that he doesn't have that pity anymore. Something tells me that at the look of his greatest love lying broken and bleeding on that nursery floor with some other guy's jizz seeping out of her and their kids crying and begging for their mother inches away, that, that pity left him on the next train bound for Hell-bent on Blood."

Kurt's face blanched, his eyes growing wide with horror. "She . . . she crawled to the kid's room?" He asked, and Earnest Darby snorted.

"Something in your tone tells me you didn't expect that little development!"

"Of course I didn't! I thought . . . I thought she had passed out!" Earnest Darby shook his head.

"Nope, and that's where they found her . . . on the floor of the nursery, bleeding like a stuck pig, and their kids crying and sobbing over her, begging her to wake up."

Kurt averted his eyes to the floor, horror and fear sweeping through them. Earnest Darby gazed at him with little more than an amused smile on his face. "Something tells me that I'm talkin' to a dead man . . . and that Jax Teller gonna draw the first blood."

She remembered him. Fit and buff at seventeen, with dirty blonde hair and sad, mature blue eyes. He had been artistic – creating entire landscapes on paper and canvas, wonders out of clay. His fingers were stained from paint, charcoal and cigarettes, but his lips and mouth tasted like passionfruit.

This man, this . . . depressed seventeen-year-old with a heart of gold, was the Kurt Darby that Velvet most liked to remember, not angry, drug-filled creature that had raped her on the kitchen floor of the house she shared with Jax and their children.

"So wait – you don't have any other family but your father?" He asked her with an interested grin, and Velvet remembered shrugging. She was twirling a blade of grass in-between her fingers while an opened sketchbook and a charcoal pencil was in his. On the canvas lay the forest stretching out before them like a great, sleeping beast, ominous in its beauty.

"I mean – I have a half-sister, Kerrianne, and a step-mother, Fiona, but . . . I've never met her – either of them! Apparently, my da was married to Fiona when he met my mom. Fiona had been eight months pregnant with Kerrianne when my mom found herself pregnant with me. She left . . . not soon after, bound for Ireland. My mom . . . she at least waited until I was born, and then left in the hands of my da. She skipped out then, went back to her family in the Russians, and I've only seen her sporadically since then. But whenever I do see her, though . . . she looks at me so sadly . . . she hugs me like she never wants to let me go . . ."

She remembered Kurt gazing at her in awe then, amazed at the amount of drama swirling around her birth, at how her father loved her – at the mother who was never around, but who clearly loved the daughter she rarely saw.

It takes him a while to realize that she was crying and almost immediately, he's flipping to a new page of his sketchbook and drawing her like the way she was then, sitting cross-legged amid a cloverpatch, head bent, with tears falling down her olive-skin and her thick black hair falling over one shoulder. She was beautiful, and it was that inner-beauty and strength that Kurt Darby wanted to capture. She doesn't notice what he's doing - only answering the occasional question he asks in order to keep her that way.

"Does your dad still love her?" He asked her, and Velvet shrugged.

"He says he loves Fiona – that he's always loved Fiona - that his thing with my mom was just that – a drunken, one night fling. . ."

"But . . ." He prodded gently, and Velvet shrugged then as she brought her eyes up to watch him. She doesn't say nothing about him drawing her, just watched with expressionless eyes as his charcoal-covered fingers gently shaded in the shadows of her face, the hollow where her nose met her cheek, the light darkness underneath her eyes. He was making her beautiful . . .

"But, its different . . . complicated even. Whenever he talks about my mother, he gets this-this look in his eyes! I think he's had to convince himself that he loves Fiona, all the while denying the feelings he has for my mother." She told him and Kurt nodded as he turned the sketchbook slightly to add more detail to her half-closed eyes.

"I saw your mother once . . . she came with an old guy to talk to my da . . ."

"He must have been my grandfather. I've never met him either, but now I think she's married to a young guy . . . Alexandre I think, is his name. He runs the Russians now."

"Anyway, she came with your grandfather and I just . . . I was struck by how beautiful she was! I'm not surprised your father fell so head-over-heels in love with her," He spoke and she nodded stiffly, but he smiled and turned his eyes up to her. "Looking at her, I can now understand how you're so beautiful!"

Velvet remembered blushing at his words and hardly understanding the next question when it came,

"Does your mother love your da?" He asked her, and Velvet almost immediately snapped out of whatever crush-induced haze his words of how beautiful she had been, had put her in. Her eyebrows furrowed together in surprise that he would almost ask a question like that.

"She never stopped, Kurt! She cries for him in her sleep – this is one of the things she whispers to me! I think she always thought that if she whispered it to me that I would end up telling him."

"Have you?"

Velvet remembered shrugging in indifference. "What good will it do, Kurt? It won't bring my parents back together . . . and even if it did, they would both still be in pain. Moms a Russian and da's a Son . . . you tell me how they would make a life out of that?"

"Where the fuck is he?" Jax roared in anger as he whirled into Chapel like a tornado, his eyes wide and angry. The Sons turned their gazes onto him, their eyes wide with alarm. Juice was the first to speak, and even then, he was interrupted by a very angry Jax.

"Jax, what are you -"

"It took me four fucking hours to get Velvet calmed down enough to go back to sleep last night!" He spat out, his voice forced to become calm and even. "She had a Nightmare . . . another bloody Nightmare!" He shook his head, his eyes wide and ghosting with tears. "You wanna know what it was? She dreamed last night, that she was pregnant, but not with my child – Kurt's child! She was big as a house and when the contractions came, she didn't give normal birth. Instead, her stomach split open, and a fully-formed, fully-grown Kurt burst forth like some fuckin' scene from the Puppetmasters! Then . . . then he proceeded to rape her . . ." Jax looked away so the others couldn't see the lone tear that sped its way down his cheek.

"I want to know where this fucker is, so I kill him! So I can rip his head off and finish him so that I get my life back to normal! So I can sleep a full night's sleep without having to wake up and calm down Velvet or to stop her from killing herself because the Nightmares seem so goddamned real!" He roared out as he punched the nearby wall. He stood there for a moment, his fist not leaving the doorframe he ended up punching, and eventually, Chibs stood and slowly turned him around.

"Jax . . . we all want retribution – do not doubt that we do! Velvet is my daughter – I'm so angry at times for what Kurt's done to her, that I can barely see straight sometimes!"

"Then tell me where he is Chibs!" Jax hissed through gritted teeth as he grabbed at the older man's shoulders. "Tell me where he is so that I can end this!"

Chibs shook his head. "Jax, you're not thinking straight!" Clay finally spoke up, his signature cigar in his hand and black shades on his eyes. "Hell, we don't even know where he is!" He gestured to him and Tig and Jax gritted his teeth, never wanting so badly to take that cigar and force it down Clay's throat. He opened his mouth to retort, but was interrupted by a voice coming from behind him.

"He's probably down at the poolhall . . ."

The entirety of Chapel went as silent as the grave and Jax slowly turned around to face Half-Sack standing in the now opened doorway, his face expressionless. "You . . . your sure, Sack?" Juice asked him slowly, and Half-Sack nodded confidently.

"I drive by that place every fuckin' day on my way here, and his bike's always there. Nice bike, black – Harley Davidson Iron 883?" Jax nodded.

"Yeah, that's his . . ." Half-Sack nodded, a bit more confidently.

"Then he's there . . . right now, come to think of it." He spoke and Jax gazed at him warily.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked him cautiously, and the steely expression Half-Sack gave Jax almost caused him to instinctively back up.

"I never stopped loving her Jax – not once, even when I admitted defeat to you. However, your Crow or not, I still want this fucker to die too." Jax smiled a tight smile as he clamped a hand on the younger, thinner man's shoulder.

"I can promise you that Half-Sack . . . that I can promise you."

Half-Sack's hand moved to clamp on his wrist in a surprisingly firm grip. "You fail . . . and I'll kill you." Jax's smile turned into a grin.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, buddy . . . because I don't think I could face her and our children if I failed."

"Juice - Juice, put him down!"

She was nine, then, Velvet, when an eleven-year-old Juice decided he wanted to use that day to tease her. Jax and Opie had been twelve and thirteen then, respectively. Juice, grinning, shook his head as he ran from the younger girl, his hand latched tightly on to the small, struggling animal the color of sand. Velvet had tears in her eyes as Juice hopped on to the pile of boxes out of her reach and held up her hamster, his finger pointed to its head in the shape of a gun.

"Give me your money, or Mr. Wiggums gets it!" He threatened gleefully, the hamster struggling even more frantically, releasing small squeaks as he did so, and Velvet gazed up at him, a tearfully defiant look in her eyes and her hands on her hips.

"Juice, you know I don't have any money! Now give him back! My mommy gave him to me last time I saw her! He's all I have of her -"

She was interrupted by Juice resolutely shaking his head. "That's not good enough, Vel! You know the process – no money, no hamster . . ."He trailed off and Velvet let out a scream of protest that was shattered by a strong voice coming from the nearby doorway of the clubhouse that led off to the shop.

"Juice, give her back her hamster!"

Both of the nine-year-old children turned startled looks onto the tall boy standing in the doorway, his shoulder-length blonde hair twinkling in the sunlight falling in through the windows and his blue eyes angry. Juice paled at the look of Jax Teller standing in the doorway, the hulking shadow of a thirteen-year-old Opie behind him.

"I was just playing with her, honest, Jax!" He spoke up, and Jax shot him a look as he left his place by the door and moved over to them.

"She's nine, Juice! Now give her back her hamster!" He ordered and Juice did what the older boy said, gently depositing the squirming hamster into the young girl's hands. Velvet hugged the trembling animal to her chest, petting it gently and shushing its still terrified squeaks. Opie stayed over by Juice, barring him from hopping down from the pile of boxes, as Jax moved over to stand before Velvet.

"Is he hurt?" He asked in concern, and Velvet shrugged her shoulders as she methodically checked over the hamster. At first she shook her head, but then let out a terrified squeak.

"Jax, his toe - he's missing a toe!" She burst out in fear, and Jax immediately took the hamster from her, where he observed the back foot. Sure enough, Mr. Wiggums, the sand-colored hamster, was missing a toe. "He struggled as Juice took him out of the cage – he much have struggled a little too hard! Oh Jax, do something!" She begged him, tears filling her eyes and he gazed at the girl he would eventually grow to love and smiled a small smile.

"Come on, there's a first-aid kit in the bathroom. We'll figure out what to do then." He told her, and Velvet nodded as they moved for the bathroom, Jax shooting a guilty looking Juice a mean look. Jax cradled the exhausted, trembling hamster in his cupped hands as Velvet rushed ahead of him, opening doors as they went.

Soon, they reached the bathroom, and Jax gently handed Mr. Wiggums off to her as he hopped on the countertop to reach the first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet. Carefully, they cleaned the tiny stump that had once been the hamster's toe, and then slowly, carefully wrapped it in a tiny strip of gauze. Velvet hung over him like a shadow, every now and then squeaking out for him to be careful or to be gentle.

Soon, they were done, and Jax trailed after her to her room in the clubhouse, where she gently deposited the hamster into his cage. The small animal immediately moved over to his water bottle, where he drank heartily.

"See, Velvet, he's going to be fine!" Jax told her and Velvet let out a grateful smile as she hugged him tightly. Jax's arms went around her too, holding her tightly.

"Thank you Jax, oh thank you!" She told him in excitement, and Jax grinned.

"Your welcome Velvet," He spoke and she stayed silent for a while until she spoke again.

"Jax . . .?"

"Yes, Velvet . . . you want me to beat up Juice for you?"

Velvet let out a laugh and shook her head. "No! Juice didn't mean it! I just . . . I wanted to tell you that . . . I love you."

Jax remembered telling her he loved her back, and even then, when she was nine and he was twelve, so recently back from playing vet with her now one toe short hamster, he knew he would always love her.