***

Instead of writing last weekend, I went to Vancouver to kick around downtown for the last couple days of the Olympics. Never seen anything like it. It was a party that went on for miles. Yeah. So I didn't write. Living was more fun.

But now I've caught some kind of vile Olympic plague. I wrote and edited about half of this with a fever after sleeping for 14 hours straight. Quality assured! It's another Annie-vision chapter, going over Chapter 9 from her eyes. Next chapter will move forward again, picking up a few months after Chapter 14 left off.

It's kind of funny how almost every SoA story has a scene with Gemma interrogating the OC. My version of Gem probably have been a lot sharper if the club weren't invested in keeping Anne quiet until they figure out what to do with her.

-B.

***

Gemma is sitting on the couch in the living room when I emerge from the shower. She's facing away from the bathroom door, so I have a moment to take a deep breath before tucking my damp hair behind my ears and facing her. Legs primly crossed and a magazine in her lap, she looks as patient and inscrutable as the sphinx. I don't understand this world yet, but she's definitely a gatekeeper of some kind.

Her gaze locks on mine. This is a woman who is used to being in charge. She wears it like a crown.

I, however, am not in an obedient mood. When I woke this morning, it was from a vivid nightmare of kneeling over Kip with a knife in my hand. Sweat-soaked and shaking, I'd cried in the shower. Even that had hurt—the water stung the cuts on my back and turned the tattoo into one heavy burning ache between my shoulder blades.

"Morn'n Annie." Her eyes rake over my outfit of track pants and an old t-shirt with the letters SAMCRO blazed across the chest. She pats a pile of neatly folded clothes next to her. "Figured you might want a few more outfits since you're gonna be sticking around. You're too pretty to be going around in men's t-shirts."

"Fashion really isn't high on my priority list right now." I can count the number of people who call me Annie on one hand, and I'm happy about adding this stranger to the list. I perch on the armrest farthest from her. She doesn't invoke the primal fear some of her men do, but that doesn't mean she's safe. It's better to keep myself out of reach.

Voice gentle and full of empathy, Gemma asks, "How are you feeling?"

I let my eyes narrow slightly at her, and shrug. It's a stupid question. I actually do feel better for having shared some frantic catharsis with Tig, but that's not something I'm talking about with anyone. I realize from the twitch of Gemma's lips that she almost certainly knows I had sex with him. I am remorseless.

"C'mon, babe. Get dressed and let's go put a pot of coffee on for the boys."

Something must betray my hesitation. Gemma's face softens. "You stay hiding, pretty soon, it's all you're going to know how to do. Don't worry about my boys. They're all still snoring in their own filth. No one would bother you anyway."

I'm a little bit taller than Gemma, but because I'm not wearing heels, the jeans fit well enough. It helps that I lost weight in Connor's care; trauma is an unsurprisingly effective diet. All the shirts she brought are form-fitting and flattering, which I'm less pleased about. I'm not ready to dress like a biker vixen, though before the Nordics, I'd have found it fun. I pick up the oversize plaid shirt that belongs to the doctor's boyfriend and wear it like a jacket. My body belongs to no one but myself.

In the hallway, Gemma's sharp eyes notice my increasing anxiety. She gives me a half-smile and places her warm, dry hand on my face. Its classic—she's setting the terms of our interactions, offering me approval and encouragement to confide in her. If I hadn't spent most of my life around people who take manipulation to a high art, I'd probably have bought it. I meet her gaze and hold it just a little too long to be comfortable. It's a way of letting her see that my walls are up and she's got a mile of barbed wire to cross before she gets anywhere close to the heart of me.

A less confident woman might have gone on the defensive. Gemma just looks amused. Inexplicably, she says, "Yeah, you'll do."

Do for what? Tig? I know she's married to Clay, but that doesn't necessarily mean very much. She doesn't seem jealous that I've been rolling around the sheets with her blue-eyed biker, but this is a different world than mine. The clubhouse is testament to that. Half naked women are draped on both furniture and bikers, and the whole place smells like a distillery.

"This bother you, babe?" Gemma asks. She's watching my face carefully.

"No." I step over the outstretched leg of a woman who is sleeping under the pool table, half sprawled in the embrace of a young biker. This isn't exactly how I like to end a night of partying, but I don't see any bruises or chains. To each their own.

"I hear you're a teacher."

I shake my head. "A counsellor."

"A shrink." Gemma's tone is cooler.

"No. I just help figure out what kids need. Sometimes that's a psychiatrist. Other times, not." It's a short answer, but I don't think she's actually curious about the neurotic teenage population of Lanbridge High.

"Fair enough. How'd you end up doing that work?"

"It suited me." I shrug as I say it, but the words are past-tense. An old core of hurt and rage has reignited in my chest since that first terrifying night in the back of a cold windowless van. I can't go back.

She watches me carefully as I pick my way around the detritus, human and otherwise. She fusses with the coffee maker, but I know she's got an eye on me. "Who are you looking for, darling?"

"I see stuff like this, I check for alcohol poisoning. Habit." I avoid Gemma's eyes. "And I'm looking for Kip."

"Not Tig?"

She's fishing. What a bitch. I know my smile doesn't reach my eyes, but I put a bit of leer in it. "No. I know he's just fine."

Gemma is caught completely off guard. She laughs like she means it, and shakes her head. "Kip went off with a couple of crow eaters late last night. Boy needed to blow off some stress."

Crow eater. Well, that's colourful. "I understand."

"I bet you do. There are mugs in the cupboard to your left."

I get two mugs down from the shelf, wincing as muscles and abused skin protests. In a twisty way, it feels good to hurt. As we wait for the coffee to brew, Gemma slings questions at me.

"Got kids?"

"Nope."

"Want any?"

"Nope."

She's utterly unfazed by the staccato nature of our exchange. I feel like I'm being interrogated by a new boyfriend's mother. She cocks her head to one side. "Not real chatty, are you."

I shrug. I like that she's not treating me like I'm fragile, so I offer her some truth. "Half of me is still back there. It's hard to feel in the moment right now."

Her deep brown eyes assess mine, and she nods. "Yeah, I get that. I lost a man and a kid some years back. It changes you."

"No one died. But it was so close..."

"Yeah?"

I shake my head. Where there should be pain is just a blank white wall of nothing. There are no words. It's as if my voice has momentarily left me.

Gemma doesn't bat an elegantly mascaraed eyelash. "Did Kip ever tell you why we call him 'Half-Sack'?"

She tells the story, as well as some other details about poor Kip's time with the Sons. I think she's doing this to humanize the bikers and give me a way to see beyond the black leather, guns, and bikes. I want to see Kip as something other than a bleeding wreck of pain and rage, so I listen. I want to imagine him whole and undamaged by my hands.

It's hard to laugh, like it's hard to cry, but I make myself go through the motions of laughing at Gemma's story. It'll get easier with time. But now? Just another mask, just another lie.

I hear motion behind me and adrenaline hits me like a slap in the face. Am I always going to feel this way? I swallow it back and remain still. From the knowing and amused look on Gemma's face, it's either Kip or Tig. A moment later, the weight of footsteps behind me tells me it's the very same man I dragged to bed with me the night before. The fear drains out of me as quickly as it came. I don't know if I'd call it trust, but this is a man who isn't going to hurt me.

He hesitates before coming into the kitchen. I guess he's afraid of me, in a way. Sex can change things between people. Especially ones volatile from recent trauma. In a flash of insight, I realize that he's probably as skittish about the idea of commitment as I am.

Well, he's got nothing to fear. I'm not trying to trap him or anyone else. The sex was a way of reclaiming my body from Connor, and I don't regret it. He walks past us to the coffee, and I feel his eyes on me.

I am not ashamed, so I look at him. But I am not asking anything of him, so I look away again. I've got so many things to feel bad about right now that any shame I might otherwise feel for screwing a biker just isn't registering. His closeness makes my skin prickle. It's disconcerting to feel attraction when I feel virtually nothing else.

He leaves the room, which is both a relief and a disappointment. I don't like how much I want to be near him. There's a premonition of pain there. Being here hurts. I don't want leaving to hurt, too.

He's a biker, not a gentleman. He slipped away while I was sleeping, which tells me we're on the same page. Allies, maybe friends, but he's not getting any ideas about me being his girl. A twinge of wounded pride there—who doesn't want to be worth hanging onto? But what would I do with him if he did? This is for the best. I like sex a whole lot more than I like relationships, and judging from the debauched scene in the clubhouse this morning, I'm not alone.

When unfamiliar male voices begin to stir in the room behind me, it evokes a terrible wariness. I focus on Gemma's voice and fight back a wave of panic at the idea that I'm isolated and surrounded by strangers. I break away as soon as I can, picking through the mess back to the apartment. With a locked door between me and the bikers, I feel safer, but caged. There really isn't very much stopping me from just walking away, but what then? Jumping at every sound, waiting for another swastika-tattooed hand to grab me? Clay has my wallet, and my passport is back in Calgary. It's all shit. I have no options.

By early afternoon, I'm so bored and jittery that the idea of walking away is starting to seem like a good idea. I don't want company, but in the empty aloneness of this unfamiliar space, dark thoughts overwhelm me. It seems like everything I want these days contradicts something else; there is no safe middle ground. I think about Connor's instructions to hurt Kip, and how I followed them, trying to pick a path that caused the least damage. Remember Kip's scream, the knife in my hand, and Connor's breath hot against my skin as he leans over both of us…

The chain around my neck is long gone, but I feel the cold weight of every steel link against the bruises.

It's hard to breathe, and I swallow back nausea. This is a text-book panic attack, though knowing it doesn't make it any easier to bear. Lying on the bed in sheets that still smell faintly of Tig's leather is a faint comfort. I curl in on myself and count individual breaths until the world withdraws to a tolerable distance.

I'm not ready for it when the door slams open. My heart shudders and I bolt upright in bed as a large, bearded biker steps into the room. Wordless, the look in his eyes is some mix of rage and pain that resonates. He stalks towards me. There's nowhere for me to go, and I can't look away from him. Am I about to get raped again? Did I wander into the middle of some deep rivalry here? Breathe, just breathe.

There are tears in this man's eyes. It's unexpected, but it gives me strength.

Tig comes into the room at a near-run, halting in the doorway. Clay is right behind him. "Easy, brother. She didn't pick her family."

So that's it. It's about June. It's always about June. My anger is quick and hot, but another source of strength. The biker looming over me lifts his hand and lightly touches my bruised throat.

"Donna got killed because she was my wife. This girl went through hell because she was Stahl's sister. How is that fair?" He says in a voice that's barely above a growl. "You know what your sister did to us, little girl?"

"No." It might not be the answer he's looking for, but it's all I've got.

"Does she know where you've been?"

If June knew I was in trouble with gangs, she'd see it as a personal slight. She wouldn't come out of kinship, but she would come for pride. "Doubt it."

"What were you doing in Lodi?"

The implication is that it's somehow my fault I fell in with Connor's gang. This has, somehow, become an interrogation. I look away from the man whose hand still lightly touches my throat and regard Clay, alpha wolf of this pack.

Impressively, my voice is steady. "I was thrown in a van on my way home from work. They drove all day, all night. I didn't even know I was in California at first."

The biker's large, calloused hand encircles my throat. It's oddly gentle, only the slightest pressure to tell me how easily he could hurt me if he chose. I see a battle going on in his pained brown eyes. Tig's hand touches his shoulder. I do not look at Tig. My eyes remain on the stranger, daring him to tighten his grasp.

"Tell me the truth." The biker says.

I tell the bare bones of how Johnny Levenson gave me over for the honour of being a neo-Nazi. How stupid was I to think I was immune from the gang bullshit I was meddling with? And now here I am, with yet another gang Juney stirred up like a kid poking at a hornet's nest.

How would June handle this man? I raise my hands and encircle his broad wrist. He's not expecting me to react like this, and his eyes betray a flicker of uncertainty. I push forward and stand, using my grip on his wrist to keep the pressure away from my throat. It would be trivial for him to resist, but he lets me stand. The moment his fingers go slack, I firmly push his hand away from my neck.

For a moment, I feel like June. Then I'm just me again, and I'm so tired I could cry. It's hard to even stand. "If you've got shit with June, take it up with her. I haven't even spoken to her in five years."

Clay withdraws, taking his men with him. Only Tig remains. The last time we were alone in this room together, I was falling asleep naked beside him. Now he's looking at me like I'm something poisonous or corrupt. It's a fresh and unexpected hurt.

We argue sharply and briefly. I don't understand what June did here, but unraveled whatever acceptance and safety I had among these men. How many people in this gang did Juney piss off? How many of them want to hurt me because they can't reach her? Judging from the cutting ice in Tig's blue eyes, there's something personal there for him as well. When he compares me to June, it cuts so deeply that I have to turn away from him. I won't let him see me hurt.

He reaches for me, and I'm expecting him to be angry or rough, but he isn't. His warm hands gently touch my arms, and then rest firmly on my shoulders. I'm frozen between the desire to turn to him for comfort and the instinct to pull away. The strength of his hands on me is a vivid reminder of the night before.

It kills me how much Tig affects me. I'm trying so damn hard to withdraw and heal myself that it's infuriating how much his touch affects me. When he's near, it's like an electrical current between us, and all I want to do is close the distance between us. I'm trying to conquer my fear, but when Tig's around, it just slips away.

But I need to be strong, and to me, that means independent. Tig releases me and leaves. When the door clicks shut behind him, I am alone. The weight of the ghostly chain around my neck is suddenly too much to bear. My legs give out, and without anyone to see my weakness, I let myself cry.