drownedindreams | Waking up is hard to do.

When Tara finally fell asleep, she started dreaming almost immediately. It was because she hadn't been sleeping, her brain was desperately trying to process all of the things she'd done in the last week. She awoke with a start and a gasp, completely disoriented. She had no idea what time it was, where she was - nothing.

She was curled up next to Jax who was on his back, and she pulled in a breath, her eyes searching in the darkness, looking to see if there were scars from when he'd been in prison or the myriad of scars he'd just picked up since he'd left Belfast. Featherlight fingers skimmed the skin that was smooth and even, and she pulled in a breath, and bent to press a kiss to his chest.

She pulled in another breath, and slipped from bed, padding to his dresser, and pulling one of his shirts over her head, and after a minute of searching she managed to find the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror under the harsh lighting from the ceiling. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her neck reddened from the scrape of his beard from last night, and she washed her face, coming back to bed after she'd recentered herself.

She wasn't expecting him to be awake, and she slipped back into bed, her voice quiet. "Hey, I didn't mean to wake you." She knew that they needed to talk, and before they got caught up in the boys, they should take this time to do it.

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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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