[[Backlog: Darrow 2]]

[unroyal]

"Look, I understand that this must be hard for you--" pinching the bridge of her nose, Tara paced on the street corner, the orange of the light attracting moths that circled it like a tiny sun. After being interrupted the third time, she broke in, her voice sharp. "No. Like I said, I get it. It's hard, but it's your job. Suck it up. He'll be fine until morning, unless somebody drops the ball. And since you're on call? That somebody's you. I'm going home."

She's stopped on the sidewalk, halfway between the hospital and her apartment, her lips pressed in a thin line. "Now, are you listening to me? You call me back if his temp rises over a hundred and two, or if he's bleeding, and besides that? Handle it. It's your job."

Ending the call, she wished not for the first time that she still had the satisfying click of snapping the phone closed; hitting a button on a touch screen didn't have the same impact, and didn't diffuse just how much she wanted to throw her phone as far away from her as she could.

She, as much as the overnight attending liked to ignore it, had a life. It was a decent one -- more than two years here had squared it so that she had new friends, a new job, and a new life. It was normal, now - as normal as it could be, being here.

Her heels clicked on the sidewalk as she turned to head home, moments before she heard it.

There isn't a lot of thought that goes into Tara pulling the gun from her purse, methodically checking it to make sure that it's loaded before she slips it into the pocket of her jacket. Motorcycles aren't something you hear a lot in Darrow -- especially not in the city at night, but it's a gut reaction that she can't ignore. Even if it's nothing, it still won't have hurt.

But it's not nothing. She's standing there on the corner, turning back to look at the sound when she sees him and she knows that he sees her. Her immediate response? To stop and grab a cigarette from the smashed pack buried in her purse, and to light it. It was only a matter of time, right? Right.

Comments

[consciencedcowardice]

Fuck.

Dread and hope spread through Jax all at once. Even through the roar of his motorcycle and the shade of his driving glasses, there was no mistaking it. That was Tara, standing as sharply and fiercely as he remembered her at her best. He could see, too, her unhurt right hand.

How long had she been here? She didn't look new. She looked as if she'd been settled a while, had time to get clothes, build a life. Jax still didn't look much better than he had since he arrived. The time he'd spent in jail hadn't helped.

His bike pulled off to the side and he took off his helmet, stared at her, and spoke only one word. "Tara?"

[unroyal]

".... Hi, Jax." That's what she settles on, looking at him like she's trying to figure him out. Like she doesn't know if she should even move closer, or not; wary, instead of afraid.

She knows things that he might not. She knows things about him. About herself. She knows that she's a dead woman walking, and it's changed her. She knows how it happened. She knows that she would have been pregnant if she'd been there much longer. That she would have killed someone. Gone to prison.

Been drowned and stabbed in the back of the head with a carving fork.

"How long have you been here?" Here, she clearly means in town, and there's a part of her that's desperate to run to him; the part of her that's sixteen and got her all caught back up in that fucking mess when she'd come back to Charming in the first place.

She'd always loved him. From the moment that Tara had laid eyes on him, she'd been done for, but it's been more than two years, and she's not the person who he'd left behind when he'd gone to Ireland.

Still, she can't stop the way she looks at him, like she's trying to make sure that he's not hurt, to figure out when he's from-- it's the when that worries her, because--

Because.

[consciencedcowardice]

"A while," Jax says. He gives her a closed look, one that tamps down on months of grief and longing. He doesn't tell her that he'd shown up with a hot Springfield and Barosky's corpse wearing matching slugs. Of course they'd missed each other–she'd been going about her life and he'd shown up in Darrow and been pipelined into jail.

He can't say it's not where he belongs.

"You're..." he stops himself because what if she doesn't know? Tara can't imagine what it had felt like to cradle her body, to sob and feel the coldness, the chance of reconciliation snatched away.

But by God, she's alive.

[unroyal]

".... Alive?" She finishes his sentence or him because she knows him. They know each other, and he looks like he's already been dragged through years of a life she's honestly thankful that she's avoided.

"Yeah, I know. Big change from the drowning and carving fork, right?"

She doesn't mince words, and her eyes flick away from him only for a second, her head tipped to one side. Because she knew that she would have done anything for him, and it'd gotten her killed.

That she'd killed people, for the club. She read the report. She'd gone to prison because of Otto. Because of SAMCRO. Because of him, and she knows she died because of him.

Taking a drag on her cigarette, she does have enough pity for him - for them, maybe - to offer him one, the pack outstretched.

[consciencedcowardice]

"Alive," he says, stomach a little cold at the way she not only knows it but at the way she knows the exact method. It leaves Jax without doubt that she hates him and she well should. It's what he deserves and what he wants, for their sons to hate all he stands for, for Tara to have a life he doesn't taint.

What he wants more than that is to throw his arms around her and cling until he believes it. What he wants to do is cry into her hair and tell him how happy he is that she's alive.

What he does is take a cigarette.

"I was fixing it before I got here. The club. The debts. Gemma..."

It all sounds cold comfort and he knows it.

[unroyal]

"Fixing it?" She honestly looks surprised, and huffs out a laugh as she ashes her cigarette, trying to find the right words. "Jax."

There's no fixing it. Not after she's dead, after their boys would have no mother. She doesn't even know him-- Thomas, the papers had said, named after Jax's brother. When she'd found out, she'd wept over the child that she'd never have; and when she'd found out about her death, she'd cried for them both. For Abel, and for Thomas.

"It's not fixing it. It's cleaning up the mess, but it can't be fixed."

Honestly, she doesn't hate him. She can't hate him, she never has been able to.

That doesn't mean she's ok with this. That she can handle this. It doesn't mean that she's not afraid of him, of who he makes her be. Of the shit he carries with him, and the fact that death follows his every step.

"Gemma," she breathes, and that's when it all clicks into place. "It wasn't you, I knew it wasn't. It was your mother." Huffing out a little, disbelieving laugh, she pulls in a deep breath because even now, talking about her death isn't exactly sunshine and roses. "I always knew she hated me. Fuck."

[consciencedcowardice]

He deserves the implicit accusation but it burns through him all the same. Tara had thought that he killed her. She'd honestly thought that he was that level of monstrous and, the worst part is, he's probably capable. Already he's killed his own mother, who's to say how much of his own blood he'd have ended up spilling in the long run if he hadn't been embarking on a specific plan. If he hadn't been ready to die himself.

"Fit of rage. She thought you ratted us out," he says dully. It doesn't matter. It's more reason for Tara to hate him and to hate what he's made of himself.

"She shows up again and I'll do it again. What I had to."

[unroyal]

"I should have," Tara said flatly, pulling in another lungful of smoke before her cigarette's spent and she tosses it to the sidewalk, grinding it under her shoe. "She shows up again, I'll kill her myself if I see her first." The words are even and without anger, but she doesn't hesitate. Not until a moment later, not until--

"..... What now, Jax? We're not the same people, anymore." That much is clear. He's broken - god, she can see it, and all she wants to do is put him back together, but she loves him too much for that. Loves herself too much for that, now.

He destroyed her. She knows that, and he'd do it again. They're like circling planets.

[consciencedcowardice]

Jax doesn't say that he'd be grateful for it. The last time, with Gemma, he'd barely finished the deed. It'd taken his mother's coaching, her reminders that it was who they were, for him to pull that trigger. If Gemma shows up in Darrow, he doesn't doubt that Tara will be crueler and colder.

"If I were smart, I'd probably fuck off," he admits. Fuck off, never taint her life again. "When Ope died...then you...I forgot how to be anything but what the club wanted."

[unroyal]

She hadn't known about Opie.

The way that she blinks once, and immediately starts digging in her purse, her head down as she finds the half-crushed pack and the lighter inside. When she tries to light it-- fuck, her hands won't stop shaking, because she feels like she's been punched in the gut and all her breath is gone.

No wonder Jax went off the rails. She'd wondered, more than once. Now she knows. She knows, and it doesn't make it better, but it does make it more understandable. Still, she can't get her goddamned cigarette lit because she can't make the fucking lighter work. It's what finally got her to move closer to him, holding out the lighter to him in mute appeal, the words barricaded by the singular task of getting her cigarette lit so that she has something to focus on besides the news.

Because it hurts. It's another hurt on top of every other hurt, on top of what happened to her and to them and to their sons that Tara would never know. She's known Opie just as long as she's known Jax, and it hurts.

[consciencedcowardice]

By the time Tara holds out her lighter to him, Jax already has his Zippo out. With a turn of his fingers, there's a flame at the end of her cigarette. He looks her in the eye even as her distress kicks up the old pain. He can see the gears turning in her eyes, thinking about Donna, Piney, Opie. There are a lot of dead members of the Winston family and Jax lays their deaths pretty squarely at the feet of Clay but blaming him doesn't bring any of them back.

Going into his pocket, Jax takes out his own smokes again and sticks one in his mouth so he can light up. It's looking to be a chain smoking kind of night. An old wounds with bleeding fresh kind of night.

"When did you come from, then?" Jax asks. She knows she died but not by whose hand. She hadn't known about Opie. This city plays games, he knows that much, but that means it's harder to place what she knows.

[unroyal]

She takes a drag from her cigarette, closing her eyes for a second before she pinches the bridge of her nose. "Before I got pregnant," she finally opens her eyes, and there's something odd in her eyes. Regret, maybe; no, definitely. "I only know pieces of what happens to us. I didn't know about Opie, Jax. I'm sorry."

She hates the fact that her lower lip wobbles, that she has to look away as her eyes well up. She's supposed to be stronger than that; the shit she's been through here and in her life is more than enough to reinforce the steel in her spine, but it's still a new, raw wound. She'd known Opie for half her life, and Jax... the thought of Jax without Opie... no wonder he'd lost everything.

"You?" That's after a few moments, as she tries to pull herself together. She's asking him when he's from, even though it's obvious he's later than her.

[consciencedcowardice]

The thought crushes Jax more than it probably should. Tara had loved those boys. It hadn't mattered that Abel was her stepson; they'd both been part of her. She'd been Tara Knowles, surgeon. Tara Knowles, old lady. Tara Knowles, mother. He hurts for her even though he knows he doesn't have the right.

"Thomas," he says. "I was in jail for fourteen months and you brought him in. Thomas. God, he was perfect." He closes his eyes then and breathes out a long drag of smoke. Tara not ever meeting her son feels especially tragic.

"Two, three years later than you then. Bobby, Piney, Clay, Opie, Juice dead. Gemma and Unser. I was trying to make shit right, finally."

[unroyal]

She just freezes, the cigarette halfway to her lips, her eyes locked on him as he goes through a litany of the dead. "And me," she breathes, and it's not in anger, it's pain. Pain for him, maybe; for the two of them. For their lives, and her hand's shaking because of it. Because of what they'd lost; for how it must have killed him the same way it killed her.

"Jax..."

There's too many; Bobby and Piney and Opie; good men who were caught in this world that promised so much and gave death in return. She doesn't know what to say, and it's got her just staring at him from the corner, her eyes shiny as her hand trembles, unable to think enough so she can take a drag of her cigarette.

[consciencedcowardice]

"The club's gone so wrong, Tara," he says, voice tight with with grief. "I was trying to dig us out and Clay kept putting us back in and then after you and Opie. Shit, what was the point of leaving that life behind when it's all I was good at?"

Tara's hurting to hear it too, Jax knows it, because she's keeping away but she's got a better heart than any of them deserve.

"I showed up here with a hot gun and a dead body at my feet. I ended up in jail pretty much the second I got here. If I'd known you were here too, I'd have..."

What? Found her? Stayed away?