and then, it rolls on. (Dated Father's Day)

[drownedindreams]

It didn't matter that the kitchen was still covered in blood. It was streaked with her blood, and Jax was waiting for Scott - he'd made the phone call because he hadn't known who else to try, but it didn't matter - the dog still needed walked, and the fact that Macha's paws and tail were spotted a dark, rusty red and Tara's boots had left footprints on the stairs, the hem of her jeans was darkened. There was the smallest streak on her cheek that she didn't know about, and another one the back of one of her hands.

It was hers.

It was hers, in her kitchen; the fork, too - $4.99 at Macy's, two years ago, on clearance was her only thought - that was hers, hers from home.

Home. That was an odd concept now, because she knew. It wasn't just blood and the fork and thicker things that had come from 'Home', to her home, here. It was the file. It was the file with photographs and a coroner's report and police reports, it was the thing that said she died the day after she'd come here. Home - here - wasn't home -- and the home she remembered in California... that wasn't either. Home was where she was buried, where she was nothing but a memory and a crushing regret for some and her absence a triumph for others.

Her eyes were dead, red-rimmed and swollen from the tears she'd shed when she'd thrown up in the bathroom, when she'd stared at Jax and threw the tumbler against the wall where it'd shattered. Still, Macha needed to walk, and Tara wasn't thinking about where she was or where she'd been, or that they both had blood on them - she just let the dog lead the way.

Comments

[drownedindreams]

"Neil?" Tara takes a breath, and absurdly she remembers that he was an angel; that he'd had wings, that he'd played with Thomas with the feathers, and she thinks about that, somehow, to try and make this better.

That somewhere, angels existed.

While Tara wasn't religious, she just sort of asks, out of the blue. "Do you think angels are really real? Like- like where home is, if there're angels there?"

She's alarmingly pale, but her question is insistant, her brows furrowed together.

[likeaplanet]

"Yeah. I... I dunno, yeah. I think so," I say, taking another step toward her, though I'm still treading lightly. The question didn't do a damn thing to ease my worry.

"Tara, seriously, you're freakin' me the fuck out here. What happened?"

[drownedindreams]

"I'm dead, back home." She didn't know if it'd ever make sense, if her saying those words - which she's only said to herself, to Jax, if they'd ever not feel like her soul's being torn out. "Because I walked in today and my kitchen's covered in my blood and there's the coroner's report, so-" She pressed her fingers to her lips for a second, her hand shaking as she closes her eyes and takes a breath.

"The day after I showed up here." It sits wrong, it sits all wrong, and she doesn't know what else to say. She doesn't know how else to say it, or if she even should. If saying it made it more... real.

[likeaplanet]

"Shit..." I say, just standing there like an asshole, unsure of what to even do. Taking a step toward her, I say it again, "Shit," reaching out a hand and resting it on her arm.

Covered in blood. So it wasn't something quiet. She didn't get sick. She didn't drift off in her sleep. It was bloody and probably awful and-- Shit.

"You wanna... I dunno, find someplace to sit? You look like you need it."

[drownedindreams]

She nods numbly, and they end up sitting without Tara even recalling how they got to the bench in the park, Macha laying by their feet, staring up at them both with worried eyes.

"I guess I made it just in time, right?" Her voice cracks on the last word, her brows furrowing together as she tries to figure out what the hell to say or do. What to even think, if there is anything at all that's left to think.

What the hell does she do now?

[likeaplanet]

"Yeah, I guess so," I say, reaching out to rest a hand between her shoulder blades, just as unsure of what the fuck to say as she is.

"Do you even... Do you know what happened?"

[drownedindreams]

She doesn't have the ability to self-censor it yet. She does know what happened, and she tells him, because the words come out oddly flat and simple.

"Blunt force trauma to the head, and then I was half-drowned, before I was stabbed nine times in the back of the head with a carving fork."

Her hands are shaking as she says it, and she can't stop the way her breath is forced, and she feels like right now, right now she can barely breathe. "Probably Jax's mother?" That's when her voice gets all weird, all high-pitched and half-panicked. "So now she has my sons and Jax the way she's always wanted, and I'm- I'm-" And she just stops, staring out ahead of them, and Macha whines, staring up at both of them.

[likeaplanet]

"Hey, hey, Tara. You've got your sons, and you've got Jax, okay?" I remind her, because sure, the world back home didn't stop, but after nearly eight years of this shit, I've pretty much learned that what happens back home means fuck all to us, here. It's not like we can do anything about it.

Then it really hits me. Jax's mother. What in the fuck?

And she fought. She fought with everything she fuckin' had. Beaten, drowned, stabbed.

Reaching out to cover her trembling hands with my own, I say, "You're here. You're whole family's here, and you're okay."