drownedindreams | Waking up is hard to do.

She wouldn't look at him. "She- She told Abel that she was his mother. And- and he's not a baby anymore, Jax, he - he was-" Her brows furrowed. "It's... fine," she said with a little shake of her head. "It's not important right now, because now he's a baby, right?" Like that made sense.

She tipped her head back when he asked about her hand, and took a deep breath, and she shifted off of him, still holding hand, but she looked down, at her other hand curled in her lap, still with her wedding ring and engagement ring, that she worried with her thumb. "My hand-" She had to take a breath, closing her eyes, before she exhaled slowly, and tried to smile. "It's- It's a lot better than it was, Jax." It was a non-answer, and he could see it, in her eyes. That it wasn't alright. "There's-" She had to stop again, and swallowed before speaking. "There's some nerve damage, so..." She looked out at the window, and shook her head. "I never expected I'd have to tell you this, you know? Beside you knew, all of it, and now that you're asking because you don't know-" She stopped again, running her hand down her face, then rubbing the back of her neck as he still held her hand.

"I don't even know where to start."

"She's only his mother by blood." Blood went a long way but it wasn't everything; he'd learned that growing up in the arms of the Club. "That doesn't mean shit compared to how much you've done for that kid. For our son."

Love went a lot further too. It took the sting out of lies and eased the harshness of the truth. Even when he was fumbling, Tara still made the world a little clearer to him. Even on days like this.

"Pretend it's like a soap opera or some shit. I fell and hit my head and can't remember fuckall." It was hard to say which he wanted more, to know what had happened or simply not to. Both of them had their burdens. Not knowing meant running the risk of falling into those old habits. Knowing meant the same risks and the same guilt. "All I know is that I love you and our boys."

She closed her eyes, picking up his hand to press a kiss to the back of it. and held it to her chest for a second, pulling in a deep breath. "Things... changed, with us, Jax." She didn't know what to say, what to tell him - or what not to tell him. She knew that he'd figured out enough that he didn't ask her what's happened to you, instead he'd asked her What've I done to you.

"Things changed for both of us," she said lowly. "It's- It's bad, and I.... don't know what to tell you. If you hit your head, it'd be easier, because I'd know that no matter what I told you or didn't tell you, it wouldn't bite us in the ass, later." She huffed out a soft laugh. "I love you," she said after a second. "I love you, and our sons - and Wendy- she's not his mother. She's never going to be his mother." She still hadn't answered his question, and she pressed another kiss to the back of his hand, needing to hold it close to her. To hold him close to her.

"You were in Stockton for fourteen months," she said first, and honestly, this would be easier if he just had questions, but he didn't even know what to ask. "You got stabbed, twice. You almost died." She realised, then, that there were a string of deaths, that he didn't know about any of them. The color sort of drained from her face as she bit her lower lip, and she looked away from him. "It's bad, Jax. It's all bad, I-" She closed her eyes, and then looked back at him. "Are you sure you want to know?" She was offering to carry the burden for both of them.

Edited 2014-01-22 20:24 (UTC)

"Hey. Hey..." He could see glimpses of last night's fear in her face, like shadows had latched onto her soul. He sat up all the way and pulled Tara into his arms, holding her tightly, trying to anchor her down to the here and now, to this reality. Whatever Tara had come from was far away now. This place, this fucked up city was going to be her home and he was going to work until all the fear fled out of her until he got back that smile he remembered.

"I don't need some gypsy fortuneteller shit. I don't want you to line out my future." Easy answers weren't going to provide any fixes. They weren't how a man found his way. "I want you to tell me what I need to know to fix this." Us.

Already his mind ticked steadily, trying to figure out how many extra hours he'd need to take to set her up a little better, provide for two sons instead of one. He'd need to make Tara feel safe again.

Edited 2014-01-22 20:50 (UTC)

She closed her eyes, her hand finding the side of his neck as he held her close. "I was running, Jax." She breathed the words, her eyes flicking up to his. "I took the boys, and I was running... away, from you. From the club." She bit her lower lip, because yes, she was afraid. She was afraid that all he would see when she told him that was the betrayal, that she'd take his kids away from him.

"I didn't know what else to do, it was all that was left. I tried-" She stopped, then, and shook her head. "I- Uhm. You changed. The club changed you. It changed me," she said, sounding defeated. "I'm not who I used to be. You have no idea who I am now, but I had to try to save our sons." She didn't think he would understand, that when she looked up into his eyes, she would see distrust, see that hatred that he seemed to carry for her ever since he figured out the divorce, the miscarriage, everything. She couldn't lie to him. He had to know why she reacted to him the way she had, or else it would weigh heavy on them both, ad drag them down yet again.

Edited 2014-01-22 21:31 (UTC)

"Babe..." he swallowed at the lump in his throat, trying to pick which emotion to settle on. If someone was gonna take his boys, if someone had to, it should have been Tara. He'd asked himself, back in Belfast, if he'd been willing to part with his son for his sake. A few months ago, the answer had been yes.

Now, those thoughts contested with a hot anger at the thought of losing his sons. That Tara would think that the only thing she could do was betray him. That made him a fuck-up as a husband and made the whole situation with her into a terrible perspective. Of course she'd looked at him with fear; she'd gone behind his back and, in one fell swoop, robbed him of the three most important things in his life.

How was he supposed to take that?

And how was he supposed to cope with the fact that he was the one who had caused it? Had put fear into her heart because he and the club were so broken?

He'd fucked up so badly.

"Jesus Tara..." he muttered, holding her tight and searching for words. "What the fuck happened to us?"

Tara shook her head slightly, and finally spoke, quietly. "Clay happened. Your mother happened. Half the club is gone, Jax. I- I did what I had to do, but since you took the gavel, and when I-" She had to stop, to press her hand against her mouth so she could gather her own thoughts.

"My hair," she said after a second, "My hair is short because when I was in county, the cholas held me down and hacked it off with a knife. We're not- I had to get them away from this. From what ruined us." The thing with her hair - in the beginning, it might have seemed random, but she was trying to tell him that she wasn't who she'd been. That she'd been to prison, too. "I was going to go away, Jax. For years, I was going to be in jail, and the boys would have gone exactly where she always wanted them - to your mother. It would never have stopped. The cycle of violence, of the guns and the drugs and the death, it would have never stopped."

"Who–" Jax stopped and shook his head. He didn't want to know who'd died. Didn't want that shit eating him up from within when there was nothing he could do about it. That would be poison.

"Oh shit. Tara..." He'd never wanted this life to touch her and there it was. Tara, the one good person of them left had ended up in jail. She didn't say it was because of him. Didn't need to say. Jax knew that burden was on him, was his fault for not fixing the club or getting out, for letting Clay rule.

He should have fixed it. Should have gone nomad or gotten away or fucking figured out how to do right by Tara.

"...I should've been better."

She shook her head when he asked, because she couldn't tell him. She couldn't tell him that Opie had his head smashed in, that Kozik was blown up by a landmine. That things had gotten so fucking bad. She didn't know what happened to some of the others, but she still picked it up, sometimes, that it wasn't just death, it was gruesome and horrible.

She would carry that burden, for him. She loved him enough she didn't want him haunted by ghosts, even if some of them lived in her nightmares.

"You tried," she said lowly. "You tried. You tried over and over to get the club out of this, you kept saying we'd leave, but it just- it ate you up, Jax. It ate you and me, and it destroyed everything. It was the Irish and the Niners and Pope and the Chinese and the guys in Stockton and I just- I watched it eat everything." She bit her lower lip hard, looking away. "I thought that what we have was stronger than the pull of it, but it just swallowed me up, too."

Her eyes found his. "I did what I had to do." She looked haunted, when she told him that. "Otto killed a nurse in prison, using a cross that he asked me for from Luanne. They said I did it on purpose, and I'm an accessory to murder." She said it lowly, not looking at him anymore, because she was trying to hold herself together. "The DA offered me a deal." Her eyes flicked to his. "And I have the thing that would have given her the club, but I didn't- I just... ran. I ran, Jax."

"You would've turned rat!?"

Just as soon as his anger simmered up, it flowed away and Jax closed his eyes, rubbing the heels of his hands into them. "You should've never gone to prison. That...that's not you." Tara was the good one, the reason for him to drag himself out not for him to drag her down.

And there were all these ghosts on her and she wouldn't let him have the burden and Jax sighed, closing his eyes and holding her tight.

"Shit...We'll figure this out."

The sharp anger in his voice made her tense all over - he could feel it as she pulled away from him. "The club was gone, Jax. You told me you didn't want this for your sons. That you didn't want them to have this life. I didn't turn, I didn't, but you had me watched. I wasn't allowed to be alone with them, I wasn't- You would have killed me. Do you understand? If I'd done it, if I went into WitPro, our boys would have had a chance."

She covered her face with her hands, shaking her head. "I didn't rat, Jax. I should have, but I didn't. Even though I wanted to save our sons, I didn't rat, which I don't know what the hell that says about me." She looked away when he said she shouldn't have gone to prison. "We needed Otto," she finally said, lowly. "We needed Otto, and so I went to the prison, as a volunteer doctor. She died, Jax, because I brought in the cross. I didn't know-" She shook her head slightly. "I didn't know, but that doesn't mean I'm not responsible. They were saying it was on purpose. Pre-meditated. 5-7."

Jax leaned back against the bed, eyes still closed as he let that all sink in. How could he have let all of this go so wrong? What kind of man was he going to become and was keeping Tara close the right thing to do? What kind of poisonous touch did he fucking have?

"Why did we need Otto. I thought we..." He shook his head again and leaned forward, cupping Tara's face in his hands.

"It sounds so fucked up." And he knows too, knows that they'd both done anything in their power to take care of their boys. Tara had been the one who gave Abel the chance he needed.

And Tara. Tara in jail.

"What've I done."

"It got to you," she said softly, moving so she was sitting in front of him, not quite in his lap, but her hand held his to her cheek. "It got to you, and me. It- Things happened that hurt you, and Clay-- It got too deep, Jax. Clay-- I don't-" She paused, and her face twisted. "I don't know how I can tell you what happened, without telling you what happened." She paused, and then bit her lower lip, and then finally, quietly spoke. "You have no idea. I don't even know all of it, but- it got to us. I don't know how not to tell you, Jax." She didn't want to cry again, and she shook her head.

"It wasn't you. Not- not until the end. Not until I went to jail, you tried and it just kept pulling you, I- You slipped away from me, and I couldn't pull you back, Jax. I couldn't. You were trying to fix the club, this whole time you kept trying to get them straight, and-"

She pulled in a deep breath. "I love you. I love you, and I love the man I left behind, but god, Jackson, I need you. I need you to be this person."

Jax nodded, kept stroking his thumbs along her cheekbones and waiting for Tara's breath to even out. "We got a chance here, Tara. None of that shit's here. No Irish, no deals, no retaliation. Clean slate."

And it would be good this time. He'd be everything he needed to be, everything Tara needed him to be.

"You and me, babe. And our boys. We'll do this right, I swear."

He leaned forward and touched their foreheads and noses together, like it could seal the promise somehow.

She closed her eyes, and ran her hands up his chest to cup the back of his neck. "I don't know what life will be like, but if I'm with you, if we have our boys-" She exhaled slowly. "It won't happen again."

She pulled in a deep breath, her voice low. "Tell me. Tell me what happened after Belfast. You didn't get home at all? Didn't hear about Salazar?" She didn't know that he'd heard about the kidnapping before he'd left - it'd been hell, he'd flown in, landed, and some eight hours later she was being held hostage in city hall - and then he got her out, and the next day... the next day, he was in prison for fourteen months.

She'd thought, at the time, that it was one of the hardest periods of her life. "What is this place?" She hadn't pulled away from him, the two of them huddled together as they rebuilt their world, and each other.

"I wish I knew. I was sleeping on the plane and then I woke up in the train station. It's so fucked up, like being in WitPro." It still felt fucked up and unnerving and he didn't like it for all that he liked the city itself. "Had money. An assigned apartment. When I got here there was baby furniture and shit too."

He shifted Tara to his side and leaned her into him, rubbing circles into her shoulder. There was little else he could do as means of comfort to explain this strange, fucked up place. A place where he felt exposed and powerless against superheroes and people from strange worlds. The club wasn't exactly the Justice League, but there was a certain safety that came in shared numbers.

"It's half magic, half normal city and I don't even know where it begins or ends. New Year's was messed up, like–"

Down the hall and over the baby monitor, he could hear their boys squalling and it was almost a relief. How the hell did he explain killer magic bees?

"Okay. Then... we start again. Is there a hospital? I can- Even if I can't do what I used too, with my hand, I'm still a doctor. I'm still a surgeon." She just had to be careful, had to watch - she couldn't do neonatal, not until the rest of the nerve damage was fixed, but she could still heal. Could still help people. "We'll make it work, Jax. I know we will." She was reassuring him just as much as he was reassuring her, that they could live this life. They'd talked about it, thought about it - what they would do if he got out, if they moved to Oregon, what he'd do, what she'd do. How they'd earn money if they got out, and it was hard, for him, that if he was earning straight, she'd be the breadwinner - but it was a thing that had to happen.

"It's... magic?" She had to ask, her voice soft, confused. Magic wasn't real, and yet, here she was. Here she was, and she was about to ask him a question when Abel - she knew it was Abel, he sounded different, he started to cry and seconds later, Thomas started as well.

"This, I know how to do," she said with a huffed laugh, pulling away from him a bit. "Thomas was a little younger than Abel when he was this age, but... Her eyes flicked up to his. "You should come meet your son, Jax." It was such a weird thing to say, and her brows furrowed for a moment as she swallowed thickly. He didn't know him, but... he would.

Jax nodded, bending over to give Tara a kiss, enjoying the tiny moment of shared contact. "Gotten pretty okay at it myself," he said. Reluctantly, he untangled himself from Tara and from the bed and grabbed his boxers and a discarded shirt that he pulled over his head.

"Yeah, there's a hospital. There's...pretty much everything. It's a hell of a lot bigger than Charming, even." Bigger and stranger.

Trusting Tara to follow, he went back into the boys' room and lifted Abel, the first crier, into his arms. "What do you think you're doing, huh? Yelling and waking up Thomas?"

Tara exhaled when Jax got out of bed, scrubbing a hand over her face when his back was turned, before she shifted out of bed and followed him to the boys' room.

"Where'd you get the apartment and stuff? Is there like... a housing authority, or something, for people who just appear?" She stopped long enough to pick up her purse, and grab one of the diapers inside before coming in to get Thomas. She moved to change him before anything else, talking to Jax over his shoulder. "I've got some cash with me, and... we'll figure this out. All of it." She stared at Abel for a long second, before she looked back at Thomas, getting him all cleaned up before she lifted him in her arms, turning back to Jax.

"I can't believe he's so young," she said quietly. "I have- If you want to see them, I've got pictures, on my phone. Video, that kind of thing." Her eyes flicked up to his. "Stuff from when Thomas was born, that sort of stuff?" She was trying desperately to relate to him, to get it so they were on equal footing.

Jax nodded, jostling Abel up and down to keep him from fussing while he waited for Tara to finish with Thomas. Already, his mind was ticking through the list of things they'd need to replace. Another crib, maybe even a bed soon enough. More diapers, twice as much food. The list grew steadily, just as it had the very first day. This time, though, neither of them had to go through it alone.

"It's creepier than that. You go to a booth at the train station and you get a folder. It's got money and papers and shit. It's like being put into WitPro." Sometimes he thought that maybe, one day, he had signed up for it but somehow blocked out the memory. He stepped over and gave her a kiss to the temple. "Can always turn in the key and move here." Even after last night, it all seemed so uncertain.

"Yeah. I'd really like to see that. See what I missed out on."

She shifted him so that he was close to Jax, and his chubby hands grabbed for his father's mouth, his eyes wide. "Dadadadada-" He babbled at him, his eyes wide as he stared at his father, babbling things that were half-words, and half not.

"Thomas," Tara said clearly, catching his attention at least a little. "Say hi to Daddy." The correspond Hi! was high pitched, and he turned to look at Tara, and then back at his father, catching Jax's beard in one pudgy fist, Tara moved to pry at his fingers. "Sorry, usually it's shorter so he can't get his hands on it quite as much." She bent to press a kiss to his head, and then looked up at her husband. Well. Now, she... supposed he wasn't, anymore.

"Do you want to take him? I'll take Abel. I... know he won't remember me right now." She tried to act like it didn't bother her, even though she knew it'd be even worse than it was when he'd come back from Belfast. "Thomas knows his animal noises, some colors, numbers... he's... he's a good boy. He adores you." She knew that Jax would love him no matter what, but she just needed to tell him. "He doesn't have the heart issues that Abel does." She was worried about how this would work, if they would still.... fit, the way they always had, even when she'd been in Chicago and come back.

"Hey Thomas," Jax said, reaching out to take his boy's hand and shake it as if they were having a formal meeting. "Yeah, let's swap. The sooner he learns who you are, the sooner he'll learn who his real mommy is." Sure, Wendy had birthed him but her pursuit of a cheap rush rather than bringing a healthy life into the world. Maybe Wendy had caddies him but Tara had been the one to give him a real chance at life.

"Wendy's not here to spout bullshit. She gave up her claim to being Abel's mom when she shot fucking crank into her veins while she was pregnant." He gave Abel and Thomas a fiercely protective look before raising his eyes to Tara. They were gonna make this work.

"I know. It's- she's around because she got clean for a while, and your mom-" She paused, and spoke quietly even as she took Abel from Jax's arms, before letting him take Thomas, Abel staring up at her with wide eyes. "Your mom would rather have her," she finally said, shortly, before she smiled down at Abel, and she brows furrowed for just a second, because this - it was harder than she'd thought it would be, because she was so used to that boy, to her son, to being so far beyond the baby who stared up at her like a stranger.

She shifted him up on her chest, smiling slowly. "Has daddy been taking care of you? You're such a good boy, Abel." She smiled so he would, and then looked at Jax, and that weariness was starting to creep back in - the consciousness that made her heart ache, the fear that he'd realise she was... not right. She hid behind the one thing she knew would be set aright, pulling in a deep breath. "How's his heart doing? I have more norpace and a beta blocker they put him on last year, if you need some of the medicine." It wasn't about them, it was actually clinical, because she was, even though she shouldn't be, afraid. That she would be the one to ruin this fragile balance.

Jax should his head in complete disbelief. "What gears went fucking wrong in my mom's head that she'd want Wendy around and not you?" Maybe Gemma'd never loved Tara, but she'd loved her a hell of a lot more than the fucking junkie whore he'd make the mistake of marrying.

"Yeah, got him with a pediatrician at Darrow General–had to get someone." The because you weren't there yet went unspoken. "So he's full-up, but extras're always good."

He leaned over and kissed Tara on the forehead and the corner of her mouth. "Please don't be scared of me." He wasn't supposed to be the goddamn monster. It was him and Tara, the two of them.

"I was taking the boys away, Jax. She's slipped up and called them her children before. It's-" She looked down and kissed the top of Abel's head. "Things changed, Jax." She said it quietly, for what seemed like the millionth time, because she didn't know what to tell him.

She looked up when he moved, her eyes wide as he kissed her forehead and her lips, and when he spoke her face sort of crumpled, and she looked away for a second before inhaling hard. "It's- I have to try and remember, okay? I mean- Be patient? I'm trying, it's been a very long... five hours, if you'd believe," she said with a strained sort of laugh. "Or, I guess, months. It's been a long five months." She moved then, even though they both were holding the boys, and she fit herself next to him, leaning on him with her forehead against his shoulder for a long, long moment before Abel reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair, and she stood up abruptly.

"Okay, oww." She pried his hand free with her free one, and shook her head slightly. "One of the things I don't miss. C'mon, can't have all these men around who had no breakfast, huh?" Her eyes flicked to Jax. "Maybe... I can show you those pictures after breakfast? And we can... talk, a little, and then we'll figure it out."

"Abel!" Jax laughed a little bit and helped separate his son's hand from Tara's hair. "What're you doing, monster man?" he asked, backing away towards the door and get down to the kitchen.

"Could take you guys out." He bumped his hip against hers and then paused, giving her a softer look. Whatever man he'd become to Tara, she wouldn't meet him here. Again, he swore to himself that things would be better. He'd provide her with lots of good memories until they all outweighed the ones that had sent her running. Tara would want to stay because he was going to be the right guy. The one she needed.

"There's a place a few blocks away. Pancakes and shit. Better than what I got." Baby food he had aplenty. Adult food, not so much. "Get some shit in the bag for them."

It was in the mundane that she found some sort of solace. She knew that she could take care of Thomas and Abel, she knew how to pack up for two kids, and she let Jax carry Thomas and she took Abel and the diaper bag - wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday, and it all went the way she'd assumed that it would except for when he slipped on his kutte. She'd frozen in the doorway from the bathroom, and she'd been about to get Abel from where he'd been set on the play mat on the floor, but she saw him out of the corner of her eye and there it was again, that reaction she was trying to stop.

It was fear on her face, and he could hear the indrawn breath before she ran a shaking hand over her face. She'd barely slept, and she was running on a deficit anyway - but right now, right now she could keep her shit together. Tara exhaled in a rush, and forced a smile as she grabbed the diaper bag and Abel, blowing a kiss against his cheek before they left for breakfast. She made sure to grab her purse and her phone - turned off in her bag from when she'd been travelling, only the burner had the power on.

The walk was a short one - one that had Tara looking around the town in wide-eyed awe, because she had no idea that this much was outside of the apartment she'd found herself in six hours before. "I don't even understand," she admitted, half-breathless.

They got to the restaurant, and they were sat, they ordered - and within short order, Thomas had a syrupless pancake to tear apart and Tara sat next to Jax, leaning against him with his arm around her shoulders, and she was holding a bottle and feeding Abel in her lap. "I can't remember the last time we did this," she confessed - it'd been a lifetime ago, before they were married, it seemed like.

"Could make this happen every week if you wanted," Jax offered. Fed, with Tara and his boys, so many of his needs were satisfied that the world seemed wide open and optimism came to him easily. It was so wonderfully easy to keep an eye on Thomas while grabbing baby cereal for Abel. Things could be good again; he knew it.

"This is the kinda thing I dreamed of, back when we were kids and anything seemed possible." It had still been his dream, even when shit got rough and the world went gay. At the heart of him, Jax's wants were simple and honest.

"So. You get an apartment assigned to you but my shit's all settled and we can get another crib for Thomas easy enough..."

Tara didn't have that sort of overarching optimism that he had, but she forced a small smile. She was glad to be with him, she needed to be with him, but that didn't mean everything was okay. That she couldn't get the little boy in that she'd left in the SUV out of her head, that there was another her somewhere that was trying to run with her boys and was very possibly lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

"That'd be nice," She said with a small smile, and she closed her eyes for a second, turning her head so that her forehead pressed against his shoulder, and she could feel the warmth of him against her skin. "I... Yeah," she said, not wanting to argue, because he was right. Back before she didn't have the tattoo on her back, when it was them making the most out of being sixteen and dreaming up the world...

But it wasn't like this. It wasn't with her hand smashed up, it wasn't with her being afraid of shadows and afraid of him. Not this man, not the one sitting beside her.... but the man he would become. The man she married. "When you got this place, what was in it? I was thinking, we could see what the new place looks like, if it's the same, we'll stay where you are, but if it's not, we can figure it out?" The apartment he lived in was fine, although small - she just had no idea what to expect from any of this. She took a deep breath, and looked down at Abel again, trying not to seem like this was as hard as it was. That her skin prickled whenever the door to the restaurant opened, and she was waiting for it to be one of the guys, for this to be some sort of fugue state and everything to come crashing down.

"What're we doing, Jax?" She asked it quietly, and it was clear that it wasn't about breakfast. They'd danced around everything except the fact that shit went bad and she'd gone to prison, and now it seemed to her like they were both just pretending everything was alright and normal.

"Two bedroom, Abel had a changing table and a crib, the basics. Couch and tables, the bed there," he explained. "The TV I bought. Toys and shit. Anything extra."

He could see those little flinches, the way that Tara's eyes darted from the door and back whenever the bell rang. Maybe she was tucked into his side, sitting there, but she was clearly still a million miles away. In her eyes, he could see the distance and it scared him. Tara had never looked at him like that. When they were sixteen and wild and back before Belfast, they'd always looked wholly into one another. Now, she was hyperaware of every voice and sound, ready to run at a second's notice.

"Tara," he said again, his voice low and unhurried. He leaned over and stroked a thumb across her cheek, leaning their foreheads together. "This is real. I'm real. I'm not gonna hurt you. I'd never do that."

"Maybe there'll be another crib that we can move over? And another dresser, so I'll have somewhere to put.... the clothes I guess I don't even own." She sighed, and that's when she curled closer to him, before he noticed her problems. Her issues, the way she was reacting to the door. To the people, the strangers. Abel'd fallen asleep in her lap, and Tara gently pulled the bottle out of his mouth, the cereal on the table for later, as she looked up at him.

"How do you know?" She said it softly, and her eyes searched his. It wasn't likely the question he was expecting, quiet and raw. "How do you know you'd never hurt me? You don't even know who I am, anymore. I've watched you-" And then she closed her eyes for a second, taking a deep breath before she exhaled, and shook her head slightly. "I know you're not... there, Jax. I do. I know that you don't look at me and see the enemy." But what she saw when she looked at herself... "I took your sons, Jax. I filed the papers for divorce, and made you sign a restraining order against your mother, and I had the papers drawn up so that you would be declared unfit so that I would get custody to save them from this, and-" The words just sort of poured out of her as her face lost it's color, and she felt like she was going to be sick, because why did she ever tell him? She remembered that rage, in him. Remembered the way he'd reacted when she'd talked about taking the boys, before they left for the restaurant. Tara pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, the other hand resting on Abel's head.

"I don't--" Jax started, but then all the words came pouring out of Tara and his words caught in his throat. It was all crashing over him like a wave as Tara poured out the mea culpa and told him everything that had happened, the lengths she had gone to take their boys away from him without even so much as a hope of ever seeing again.

Tara would have run and taken his boys, just the same way that Abel was taken from him before.

The Tara he'd left behind would never have done that. The man he was now couldn't conceive of things going so badly, nor of the man he'd become.

He drew back, running his hands over his face and closing his eyes, trying to figure out what to say.

Finally, he stood and blurted, "I gotta smoke."

She'd said it because she couldn't take it anymore, she couldn't take him saying that he wouldn't hurt her, that he wouldn't do what Jax had done, because she knew. She knew, deep down, that while she was doing the best thing she could for their boys, he would. Jax, in his heart, wouldn't ever be able to just sit an deal with it, and every time he said those words - I wouldn't hurt you, I won't hurt you, she could feel the weight of it heavier and heavier on her until she collapsed. She knew that what she did was a betrayal of him, at the root of him, and it was because whatever was her, it was gone. There was no hope for her, it was because of their sons. Their sons' future.

She nodded when he moved, a small nod that had nothing to do with how she was feeling or saying, because she felt like she was pulling the emotions in and in and in, like if she could shove them all back into the black hole inside herself and banish them, that she wouldn't care anymore. She knew it was bundling the good with the bad, that she was shoving away that hope that had just started to float at the surface, but he left and she shifted Abel up against her, and then pulled her phone out of her purse, turning it on. She'd have to find a charger at some point - she'd turned it off because she didn't want anyone to find her, but here.... she guessed it didn't matter, but she started thumbing through the pictures, and even as Abel drooled against her neck, she wiped her eyes with the edge of her brace, looking at the pictures of what their life had become, what'd happened over the last few years even as she rocked him slowly. Waiting for Jax to come back, because if nothing else, she was with the boys.

Edited 2014-01-29 18:12 (UTC)

Jax burned through two cigarettes, one right after the other, trying to decide on his emotional state. It was a maelstrom, somewhere between heart and gut, and he didn't know if there was even a harbor for him to seek within himself. There were some traitors that, to an extent, a man saw coming and there were some people from which betrayal came up on the blind side and left a man shattered in its wake. This was the second.

Tara, his mother, and Opie. Those were the people that he never expected to fail him. Gemma must have done something real fucked up to make Tara get a restraining order but it was equally fucked up what she'd just confessed to him. He was many things, Jax knew, and not all of them were good. He was not, however, a bad father, an unfit parent.

It was something else entirely too. Tara hadn't said it was just him or just Gemma. Over and over again, she kept saying "the club" like the whole damn thing had gone toxic. Despite all of his efforts, the club had festered and gone poisonous like a wound and Tara's only solution had been to amputate.

What had gone wrong there?

He began to light a third cigarette and then stubbed it out on the wall, putting it back into the pack. Again, Jax closed his eyes and tried to breathe and steady himself before he opened the door and looked at Tara.

Wordlessly, he sat down and put a hand on her shoulder, fingertips edging into her hair.

She was still flipping through the pictures when he sat next to her, and when she looked at him... there wasn't fear in her eyes, just this breaking, empty weariness that seemed to bleed into everything. "I'm sorry," she said lowly. "I just- I needed you- you can't say what you would or wouldn't do if you didn't know what I did." She was trying to explain, and she pulled in a little hitch of her breath, and then looked down at the phone in her hand.

"But I'm sorry, I shouldn't- it's not something I should have ever told you, here. In public, and- I mean-" Her brows furrowed together, and she looked back at him. "When I say that it got to you, and it changed you, and then it changed me... you may never be him, Jax. You're not in the club now, but me?" She shook her head slightly, and then looked back at the phone, and it was pictures from what seemed like a lifetime ago, pictures from when she was pregnant with Thomas, when Abel looked almost exactly the same way he did now. "I'm not this," she said quietly, and finally looked back at him.

He wished, desperately, that he knew what to say. That some platitude would rise up to solve everything with some kind of promise. Nothing came. He didn't have an easy solution and it was only now dawning on him that more had changed about Tara than just her hair. In some ways, he almost didn't recognize her.

"So how do we go back to what we were?" Not who. There was no undoing the people they'd become, even he knew that. But they could still live again. She could still trust him.

They could still be a family. He believed that, fervently.

She swallowed hard, and shifted as she turned towards him. Abel was still pillowed asleep against her as she looked up at Jax. Her hand found his chest, resting over his heart even as she felt the patches under her fingers. "We try," she said quietly with she still had that emptiness in her, the way she'd pushed away the fear and memories and reactions seeping into her like a blackness. "We try, and we be patient with each other, and we love our boys, and we try to love each other." Her brows furrowed as she swallowed hard.

"You are-" She had to pull in a breath as her eyes searching his. "You are the only man that I've really loved." She meant it, the words coming from some deep part of her that wasn't poisoned from that well of fear and pain that she carried. "You're a good man, you're the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm different now, but- I still love you, Jax." She paused, and then spoke, very quietly. "Right now? You're probably the best thing that's happened to our boys. I'm not.... good, anymore." Her voice was low as she confessed before she looked away. She didn't want to see his face when she broke that constant hope he seemed to carry.

"So I guess that part's your choice. I'm not the woman you know anymore, and you have to tell me, if it's not.... enough. If I'm not enough. If you're not happy, or if you don't want this anymore." She knew the words she was saying were right, that she was doing the right thing even as everything inside her screamed for her to stop, because she was throwing away her chance to have him again, to have the man who she loved, back. "But I'll try."

Edited 2014-01-29 19:14 (UTC)

It stung to hear Tara say he wasn't good anymore. The Tara he knew was so motivated, so kind, and so inherently good that the difference was hard to reconcile to himself. The self-hatred she seemed to carry made it even worse. There was something broken in her and it was hard not to blame himself or maybe his future self. The seed of that man he could become lay in him. He could be the man that sent Tara running.

"I love you too, Tara. Some days, when everything else was about to collapse, I knew I could look at you and there was an anchor there," he said, making the words a vow. Tara had been the thing that had him looking back, looking outside of the club and trying to find that balance.

"We got love. That's a place to start."

She still had part of that - not all of it was dead and gone, but there was a point where you were up to your neck in the dark, horrible things around you, and they'd seep into your pores, your soul - and she knew it. She knew it, that she got too into the club, she tried, and it ate her up and spat her out. She couldn't be a surgeon, she couldn't save lives-- and it killed her, slowly.

But he could bring her back to life, maybe. There was a chance. "I will," she said softly, her hand still on his chest, "always be an anchor for you." Her eyes searched his. "If things happen again, I'll tell you, and we'll figure it out. We stopped talking, it... changed." Her brows furrowed. "But I won't stop talking, with you. Okay? It's... we have a place to start."

She took a deep breath, and shifted again, leaning back against him. "I want to show you these." She held Abel with her right hand, and scrolled through her phone on her left, even as her head leaned on his shoulder, stopping if he had questions, or said anything. Her, pregnant with Thomas, holding Abel. Him and Thomas, when he was a newborn. Jax was in orange, and Thomas was a tiny, tiny thing with a bright blue hat. Abel, growing up - and the club, the swingset.

It was all about the kids - she had a folder just for them, because she didn't want the rest of it to come up unless he asked, didn't want to talk about all the death that'd happened - especially not now. It'd come, some day, but now... it was the good things. She didn't realise there were things that would raise questions - like the pictures when Abel had a bandage on his head, the way it shifted abruptly from the clubhouse to the ice cream parlor, how there was a point that she stopped wearing scrubs and the massive cast on her hand with the pins in it - but she just showed him their boys, growing up, and both of them were there, too. You could watch, looking at it that way, as that happiness who made them who they were, drained out of them- but they always had their boys, and it was clear they were the center of their world. "We have love, and we have our sons," she said finally, turning her face to press a kiss to his jaw. "We can make it through this."

"Full disclosure," Jax agreed, going back to those early days when that promise had been ironclad. He would talk again, use all of his words even if it killed him. Tara was already burdened by the secrets and the future. He wouldn't add to her burden; he swore it to himself.

It was strange to see himself suddenly a few years older and Abel getting bigger, acquiring a real personality. Suddenly he was walking, running in pictures, getting brighter as he hammed it up for the cameras near all of his "uncles."

"Look at you, little man," he said to the drowsy Abel. "Look how handsome you get."

And look how much sadder Jax and Tara got. Look how arbitrarily they posed for the camera, touching because it was required, because that had always been the way they connected. Skin on skin. Only the connection was gone in those pictures, starting with Tara's smashed hand and only getting more distant from there.

The only time he saw a spark of the Tara he knew, it wasn't in pictures with him. It was when she looked at Abel and Thomas, away from the camera.

That was why she was curled against him now. It was why she'd clung to him, why she'd kissed him... it was the reason that even though she'd been exhausted and hurting, she'd desperately taken him to bed with her last night. She'd been so overwhelmed she'd ended up crying, even as she assured him she was alright. She needed that connection - both of them would die without it, they had died without it. A part of herself had withered and turned black, and now, with him... That's why she was curled as close to him as possible.

"He's brave," she said lowly. "Just like his daddy. And he's a good brother." She pulled in a deep breath, and she pulled back enough to look up at him. "It's going to take time, but- I'm going to go the hospital, see if they'll give me a job. I need to be a doctor, Jax, and I couldn't- with my hand, and then the pending felony charge, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't work, and-" She pulled in another breath. "I think that gave us... space. It seperated me from the club, a little, made it so that it wasn't my life, it was your life that I was a part of, but... but I think it would be good, for both of us. If they have daycare like St. Thomas, somebody can watch the boys during the day, and we can.... figure it out. Right?"

She didn't know what he wanted, but she thought she'd try. "I don't know if they'll accept me, but I mean, hell, I could be a nurse at this point and I'd take it." She missed helping people. She missed being a healer, instead of someone who brought pain. "So we can start again," she said, finally. They'd start again, and they'd do it right, this time.

Edited 2014-01-30 03:36 (UTC)

"That shit ain't gonna follow you here," Jax promised. "You can go to the hospital and show them what you're capable of. They'd be crazy not to take you." Even with her hurt hand, Jax was confident that she would still be a good doctor. Tara was one of the best, as far as he was concerned.

Slowly, he nodded, kissing her cheek and temple. "Blank slate, babe. We can start again and I swear, whatever's chasing you back there? It won't hurt you here."

And if they dared come and try and get in her way, Jax would make sure that didn't happen.

Waking up is hard to do.

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