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She's got a tiny, squirming ball of fur in her coat.

Tara's thinking about calling her Isis - and she hasn't the faintest idea why. She took the dog after one of the aides casually mentioned that it was so hard for pits to get adopted, even when they were babies.

Two hundred dollars and some paperwork later, and Tara's got a tiny, squirmy gray and white puppy. She text Jax - not I got a dog, or So how do you think about moving a little faster on buying a house, but just:

Something came up, I'll be home in a couple of hours. Everything's okay! <3 T.

She went to the beach. She went to the beach and dropped to her knees and let the tiny puppy explore, picking it's way through rocks and branches and barking - a high-pitched squeak of a bark - at an old horseshoe crab shell.

She looks at Tara and her tail wags, and it's not long before Tara bundles her up. She goes to a pet store, and buys things. Lots of things; a crate and toys and food and a bed and they all go into the back of her SUV, and she's got a collar and a leash (neither is black; they're a bright blue that remind her of Jax, that remind her of Thomas's hat when he was a baby.) She doesn't think of it that way, but they're Jax's favourite color, and when Tara looks at the ball of fur that's nestled on her front seat, sleeping already... she smiles.

And she grabs one of the bags out of the SUV, the puppy in her coat as she comes inside. She doesn't even know if they allow pets in their apartment, and she doesn't care. She doesn't care, and she shuffles her bags in her hand so she can unlock the front door, slipping in. She's glad that she's there in time before the boys go to bed, and the chorus of Mommy and Ma happen at the same time, and she flashes a smile at Jax. "Hey, babe," she says as she puts down the bag - clearly from a pet store - and something inside her coat makes a squeaky yawn sound.

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"Hey babe," Jax said, happy and relaxed with Abel clinging to his leg while Thomas hurtled forward to hug his mother. He glanced from Tara's coat to the bag and then back to the coat, where he could see a tiny paw falling past the hem.

"Something came up, huh?"

Already, Thomas was on tip toes and pulling at Tara's coat. "Wanna see!"

Tara actually looked away from Jax when he asked her if something came up - down at Thomas, but it was an excuse. She was absurdly waiting for him to tell her how ridiculous it was, even though she didn't think he'd do it - which made no sense. It was odd; she didn't know why she'd adopted the puppy, just that she'd done it, and she couldn't explain it. She'd wanted her, and she just did it. Her shoulders were tense even as she first showed Thomas the puppy, before she'd put her down.

She crouched, and she shifted the puppy into her hands, to show Thomas. "She's still a baby, Thomas. You remember how you have to be careful with Abel, because he's a baby? She's a baby, too. So you should be careful, okay?"

Thomas's eyes were the size of saucers, and he reached for her already. "Dog," he said solemnly. "Dog says-" And he barked even as Tara put the puppy on the floor, letting Isis - if the name stuck - find her way forward, even as Thomas waved his hand and narrowly avoided hitting Tara in the face. "Woah! Be careful. Okay? Careful." She showed Thomas how to pet her, and Thomas copied her - not with the best coordination, but he tried.

It didn't take long for Abel to come crashing and toddling after, too excited to cry when he tripped and fell on his butt. "Puppy!" he crowed, leaning forward to imitate his big brother. "Us puppy?"

Jax laughed and tickled Abel's sides. "I think that's up to your mom," he said. As the words came out, he looked at Tara over the boys' heads and raised his eyebrows. The dog was cute as hell, no denying that, but it struck him as incredibly strange of Tara to just up and buy a dog.

"Feeling impulsive today?" He didn't want to pet her yet, didn't want to get attached to her until he knew the full story. The boys could swallow a story and move on, if they had to, but Jax would remember.

"She needed a home," Tara said as she finally looked up at him. "The aide said that they were hard to adopt out, and... I just- We're looking to buy a house anyway, right?" She knew she should have talked to him first, she knew it, but that didn't change the fact that she'd just... wanted to bring her home, so she did.

"And she's young enough that she wouldn't have learned any bad behavior, she's just... a puppy." She looked back down at Thomas, the wrinkle between her eyebrows smoothing as she bent close, her chin almost on their son's shoulder as she guided his hand to pet her even as the puppy toddled around, barking sharply once as she looked up at Jax with bright blue eyes.

"Us puppy," she said to Abel, and she moved to kneel on the floor. "I'll show you how to pet her, okay? You have to be gentle, Abel. Alright?" She looked up at Jax again, and finally said quietly, "You want to meet her?" Please,, she wanted to say, Please just be okay with this.

"You know Tig had a pit bull? Loved it almost as much as he loved his daughters," Jax said, finally sitting cross legged near the puppy. "Hell of a surprise though."

He tried to convey what he was thinking to Tara over the boys' heads. That he wasn't angry or even against having a puppy. Hell, she was so cute there was no way he was gonna send her back, especially not when she had three more pairs of puppy eyes backing up her claim to stay here. It just struck him as being far more impulsive than Tara usually was.

But maybe that was the Tara he'd known, missing three years. He needed to remember that she'd changed in ways that neither of them could articulate, even when she explained some of what had happened.

"You got all the stuff she needs?"

Finally, he reached out and ran his fingers gently over the puppy's velvety ears.

He mentions Tig's daughters, and the color drains out of her face.

She looks down, looks down at Thomas, and she smooths her hand over his hair, nodding when he asked about the stuff she'd need. "It's in the SUV. Crate, food, everything. If there's anything - we can go and grab it, but I think it's everything for now." She's trying to keep her voice normal because of the boys, and it's another one of those things. Another one of the things she hasn't told him, doesn't think she'll ever tell him.

She clears her throat. "We need to name her." Suddenly, all of this seems ridiculous, and she doesn't know why she did it. Why she thought that this would be a good idea, to bring another thing into the house, something else to be responsible for, and her own name for the puppy-- No. That's why she asked, and she looked back up at Jax with a too-tight smile. "Any thoughts?"

It was another one of those moments where he said something that was innocent to him but meant something horrible to Tara. He scratched the puppy's ears and then reached out to clasp Tara's wrist, rubbing his thumb against the delicate bones there. "You can talk about it, if you want. Or we can talk about what to name this little girl," he said, voice carefully light.

The puppy yipped and licked sloppily at Jax's arm before sprawling her own limbs out as she panted and wagged her tail.

"She's cute."

"Not in front of the boys," she says quietly, and when she looks up at him, her brows are furrowed, and she's come back to him yet again, the way it seemed she always did, no matter how long it took. She's Tara, not a woman who's lost in the past. While she's still obviously not happy with the memory, those six words aren't fake and her trying to be okay, it's her actually being able to get past the fear.

It's progress. Slow progress, but progress all the same, because she doesn't say it's fine, doesn't try to fake it; the smile had been fake, but now, she's come back. She's not scared that he won't want to know, or that telling him would damage him - just that she didn't want to talk about it in front of Thomas and Abel, even though they were still too young to understand.

"She's... special," Tara said, and she reaches to scratch the top of her head, even as her hand shifts to hold his. "She was just this little, special thing, and they said how hard it was to get pit bulls to be adopted, and I just-" She shrugged. "She needs to be home with us," she said, looking over at Jax. "I brought her - you should name her, so she's ours. Something... special. She needs a special name." And even Tara didn't know what she meant by that, but it... felt right, to say.

Edited 2014-03-27 03:49 (UTC)

Jax nodded, squeezing Tara's hand again before leaning over the puppy. The looks that Thomas and Abel were giving him, there was no way they were taking him back. "You can talk about it when you can," he agreed. For now, there was something in front of them, happy and good.

"Something special huh? Some kinda warrior name?" He racked his brain, trying to think of what might work as special. For some reason Trinity popped into mind. She was, indeed, a good and strong woman but she was also the half-sister he'd almost fucked and that was just...No. Not Trinity.

But maybe someone from one of the warrior stories she'd mentioned to him.

"Ever heard of a goddess named Macha?"

"When they're in bed," Tara said with a nod, her voice low, before she nods the moment that he says some kind of warrior name.. "That. That's what she needs. She's... fierce." Even though she was currently sprawled half in Jax's lap with her jaw stretching for some sort of long yawn.

"She's still a baby," she said after a second, out of the blue. Her eyes flick to his, and furrow together, but her thumb slowly smooths over the back of his hand. She's trying, maybe, to explain why she'd needed to bring her home.

"I haven't heard of Macha, but... I like it. I think it's a good name." She hadn't even asked at first, although Jax may tell her anyway - but she'd already started referring to the puppy as Macha in her head. "Is it short for anything, or is that just the name?" She shifted to catch Thomas just before he could wrap his hand around her tail. "Remember, be careful, alright sweetheart?"

"She's a pit bull. Ain't a fighter, but she's got that protector spirit." It wasn't quite that, he figured, but all of them had protective streaks so maybe it made sense that they wanted to watch over someone who'd look after them, eventually.

"Irish goddess, of horses and kings. She could outrun a whole herd of horses and curse the shit out of people," Jax explained. "Trinity told me about her."

Had he told her about Trinity? Who knew?

"Yes mommy," Thomas said dutifully, moving to pat his hand up and down rhythmically on the puppy's stomach.

"She'll be good for our family," Tara said lowly, nodding once. She liked what he said - Goddess of horses and kings. "It's fitting, then. Macha. It's a good name." She laughed when he talked about cursing the shit out of people. "That sounds like our family," she said with a smile, and her fingers find his to squeeze once.

Jax'd hadn't been the one to tell Tara about Trinity - the letters had, and Tara didn't even know how much Jax knew. "Did you like her?" She was trying to find a way to ask if she knew that John Teller had another child. "Trinity, I mean. She's Maureen Ashby's daughter, right?"

Jax laughed, looking down at the newly-dubbed Macha. "What'cha think, pup? You like it?" Watching her roll over on her side, tongue lolling out and tail thumping against the floor, Jax figured that for a yes.

"Yeah, she was sharp, Trinity. Teller woman, in the end." Because even if her name was Ashby, she'd had the steel heart of someone who spent her life among Teller men and the club.

"Just wish they'd told me she was my half-sister when we met instead of...later."

God that had been fucked up.

Tara's brows rose higher and higher as Jax spoke, and she stared at him, her hand finding Thomas's the moment he reached for Macha's tail (yet again.)

"You didn't."

At first, she sounds scandelized, but then-- then, Tara bursts out laughing, because of the look on Jax's face. "Holy shit," she says as she tips her head back, moving from kneeling to sitting on her ass because she's laughing so hard. "Jesus, of course that would happen." She, apparently, finds it hilarious, although when Thomas turns to look up at her and says (with extreme happiness on his face), "Holy shit." Tara's eyes widen - and she's off again, in gales of laughter.

"I didn't!" Jax protested. The boys were looking up at her, totally bewildered at what was so funny. Certainly they hadn't heard any good jokes.

"Jesus, it was fucked up. We got started and then both our moms opened the door." He didn't think he'd been that embarrassed since he was fifteen and he and Tara were still fumbling around. What had followed had only been more horrifying.

"How was I supposed to fuckin' know? You know Gemma doesn't say shit if she doesn't have to!"

Tara's still laughing her ass off, and as he scrambles to explain, she leans back on her hands, shaking her head, grinning at him. "You realise you just gave me the ammo to win every single arguement for years, right? Because no matter what I do, at least I didn't do what you nearly did." She's smiling so broadly, and it's clear she's teasing the hell out of him.

"You know, I'd love to meet her. Love to. I've got to thank her, someday."

She's completely not upset about the fact that Jax was going to sleep with someone else while he was in Belfast. It's odd - but the humour of the situation, that overrides her own concerns. It overrides the sick feeling she usually gets in the pit of her stomach. "So, how grossed out were you?" Her smile is almost impish, and she's definitely not going to let this one go.

"C'mon babe! I didn't know! Hell, Gemma didn't until Maureen told her and Jesus I don't wanna know how that conversation went."

He shoved her lightly, giving her a push like when they were teenagers, shaking his head. It was hard not to smile, both because of how hard Tara was laughing and because he had to act like it was funny or he'd be forever appalled at the moment for ever happening.

"I'm off redheads for life."

Tara rocked back from the push, still laughing, and she leaned forward to pull him close for a quick kiss over Thomas's head, and she shook her head. "You just broke a thousand hearts, Jax. I'm sure that Helen's down the hall, crying into her coffee." She's teasing him - she's got no idea at all that he'd been sleeping with Helen before she'd shown up.

"I'm sure she'll find someone's arms to fall into. She's got one of those personalities," he said, without judgment. "She's got an Old Lady's heart though, looks sweet but I bet there's some tough nails in there."

He leaned forward and kissed her, glad that Tara was laughing even if it came as his expensive.

"Okay boys, time to tell the puppy good night. It's bed time."

"She seemed pretty.... tough." Tara doesn't know what else to say about it, and it's got her finally not laughing anymore even though it'd be really easy for her to fall back into it - but she and Jax probably need to talk.

She knows it, and she can't decide whether or not she's dreading it or not. She waited for both of them to tell Macha goodnight, and Tara got up, putting both the puppy and a puppy pad in the bathroom, before they moved to take the boys into their bedroom, even with Thomas asking - again and again and again, "Where dog? Where dog, Mommy?"

It was thirty-five minutes later when they were pajama'd, read to, changed, put down - and actually asleep, or close to it, nearly. Tara and Jax moved out of the boys' room, the baby monitor hanging from her fingertips before she moved to let Macha back out of the bathroom. "I got a kennel and everything," she said over her shoulder, like they were just going to ignore the fact that she up and bought a dog out of the blue.

"You want help carrying it up?" Jax asked. It was hard not to be entranced by Macha's sweet blue eyes, but she did have needs and more than a few of them would be served by going and getting all of her stuff.

"So you just came across her and she melted your heart?"

The question wasn't an accusation but Jax made no effort to hide his curiosity.It struck him as out of character for Tara. Ever since spontaneity had burned her, again and again, Tara seemed to him to be a planner. This...definitely wasn't planned.

"Yeah - it's in the SUV, with a bunch of other... stuff." She finally turned around to look at him, her brows furrowing together. "I just- She needed to come home with me, Jax." She swallowed thickly, and she looked... actually disconcerted by what she was saying. Like even she didn't really understand. "I just... did it. I filled out the paperwork and paid the adoption fee and... and that's it."

She swallowed thickly, her brows furrowing together. They had a lot to talk about - the stuff with Tig's girls, the stuff about the fact that she'd just up and bought a dog - but she didn't know what to say.

"I'm not mad, if you're worried about that." Confused, for sure, but he could definitely understand falling for those blue eyes. At any rate, it was another reason to move forward on buying a house. The toddling puppy would be all right in the apartment, but in her adult years she'd need real space.

Something else was gnawing at her, Jax could tell, though he wasn't sure what. "Sometimes things call to us. Don't always understand why, but that's all right."

She shook her head - she wasn't worried, exactly, that Jax was mad, just sort of... confused, maybe, at herself - or... "It doesn't make sense," she said quietly. "Why would I bring a dog into... this?" She doesn't specify 'this', and maybe that's why she's confused. "Except that things- They're not bad, but I just.... I wanted to do it, and I did." She seems oddly lost about the concept, even though she shouldn't have been.

"I feel like I shouldn't have done it," she finally says after a long second, "But I don't know why, Jax."

"Seems to me," Jax said, looking thoughtfully at Tara, "it's been a long time since you did something for yourself."

And wasn't that a goddamn shame? Tara did so much for other people but she'd done it at the cost of her own self. So damn selfless she'd forgotten what it was to do something for herself. Jax knew he was a part of that.

"'Cause you wanted to. She's cute."

"No, that's not true," she said without even a pause, even as her brows furrowed, and she moved to get the bags she'd bought at the pet store, moving to put away the things she'd picked up. "I do things for myself all the time, Jax. And getting a dog, that's not something that's for me, it affects our whole family." She never really thought of herself as someone who didn't do things for herself; the sheer thought of that didn't quite sit right, since... since that sort of made everything even harder to make sense of, in a way. "I should have called you. And, I mean- we have an apartment, and the boys - they're so young. I just- I just did it, but I should have... thought... about it."

"Maybe, but not enough," Jax supposed. Tara was always running around with surgery or with the boys.

"And hey, that's just what I think. I'm not God," he said. Jax turned to kiss her softly before grabbing the remaining bags. If nothing else, it looked like Tara had had them covered in terms of puppy needs, but he'd likely do some reading up on his own.

"I like her, Tara. I'm glad you brought her. The rest we'll figure out."

It brought her to a stop, her brows furrowing even more. She'd just sort of paused, the package of biscuits in her hand. "Do you really think that?" She'd said it after he'd said they'd figure it out. "That I don't... do things for myself?" Her voice was low, and she chewed on her lower lip for a second.

"That's... not really... normal."

She looked away from him, because while it made her uncomfortable - god knew it did, that didn't mean he was wrong. "You know? Who doesn't do things for themselves?" Her eyes flicked up to his, and she shook her head once.

"Apparently, now, I guess we have a dog." She tried to put a good spin on it, even though she was still thinking about what he said, and she couldn't figure out quite why it bothered her so much.

Jax shrugged, thinking about all the people he'd known here and in Charming and their varying personalities. "I've known a lot of people who spend so much time caring about others they forget to care about themselves. I don't think it's all that weird, just that you..."

He shrugged, trying to parse it out. "Things are good here, safe. Safe enough to have a puppy and buy a house and enjoy ourselves."

That was the issue, she supposed. It didn't sit right with her, because... she didn't take it the way he might have meant it. He might have just been talking about the way people did that, but what Tara was thinking.... she was thinking about it. About the last thing she'd done for herself, and.... it was when she'd taken Abel and Thomas to the park after work, a month ago, and had run into Katie.

..... That.... was the only thing she could really think of, and it drew her up short. That things here were that safe, when in comparison...

"Tig's daughters." She paused, and then licked her lips. For her, the transition made sense. It made it even more stark the difference between this place and home... even though this was home now. Between home, and Charming.

She looked down at the floor. "Dawn's-" She paused again, and then said quietly, "Gone." And it was clear when she looked up at him, that gone meant dead. She bent, and scooped Macha up in her arms, holding her to her chest. "Fawn apparently left town. It was-" Her brows furrowed. "Because of the club. Closed casket."

Her eyes finally flicked back up to his, then to the ceiling as she shook her head. She was holding Macha a little bit like someone - not him, from her body language - might just take her away. "I keep feeling like this isn't real, still. Because everything's- it's good, and I'm still telling you about things like that."

"Jesus Christ," Jax said, both a curse and a prayer. Closed Casket meant something very specific in their part of society and Jax didn't want to know who'd dared to fuck up Tig's kid and in such a messed up way. There was something dark in Tara's eyes, pained. He moved in close, one arm around her as if Jax could be her shield. His free hand rubbed over Macha's ears.

"This is real Tara. We've come from some dark shit but that doesn't mean we can't ever have anything good again." Maybe in a different world where God responded as they did, an eye for an eye, they wouldn't have this chance but here...Here it was different. Honestly and truly good and different.

"That was our old life. That was gangs and Clay and dark, bloody things and..." He couldn't say it hadn't touched their lives, so Jax paused, breathing in. "I slipped up, yeah, but this isn't gonna be the way things were."

"I know that this place is real," she said lowly. "I just... I feel like it's too easy. That I left a line of headstones, and here, what, we get a puppy and the boys grow up and we have another baby and everything's storybooks and white picket fences? I don't mean that I think you think that, it's that.... it can't be that way," she tried to clarify.

"The shoe's got to fall," she said softly, and she's nervous, jumpy. "There have been a lot of closed caskets," she said softly. "And a lot of people who just.... they're dead, but there's no funerals at all, Jax." She swallows thickly. "How can we have gotten away? How?" She's curled close against him, and her hands are full of puppy, but she wants to be as close to him, and so she tucks herself so her cheek is very nearly resting on his kutte.

"I think the amount of shit we've been through, maybe we deserve easy," Jax said. He knew he was trying to convince himself of it too, because he knew the kind of man he'd been and he knew he didn't deserve anything to come easy to him. Tara though. She was different.

Carefully, he shifted Macha between them so he could hold them both close, running his fingertips over her velvety ears. "I don't know what's coming next. Maybe some dark shit. Maybe...giant monster marshmallows. Hell if I know anymore. But if I have my say? No more caskets."

"We might deserve easy," Tara said quietly as she stared up at him. "But we don't get easy, Jax. You know that. Our lives don't do easy. We'll never be white picket fences and easy. This is hard. It's hard, and it sucks, and-" She leaned in against his shoulder, trying to even herself out. "I love you," she said quietly. "I love you, and I'm just-"

I'm so scared, Jax.

She didn't say it aloud, she instead took a second to pull in a deep breath. "I'm just tense," she said finally, quietly. "I know it'll be okay. That we'll find our way - we always do." Her fingers smoothed on Macha's furry belly. "I know it'll be okay."

"I don't want white picket fences and easy. I want what we got, however hard that is," Jax said. He stepped back only because Macha was starting to squirm but he kept his gaze on her. "I want easy, but if the choice was easy or this? I'd fight through it."

He reached up, laid a gentle hand on her cheek. "You're right. We'll find our way. I trust you, babe. Now...let's get this girl settled in, huh?"

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