[[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]

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?