consciencedcowardice | I can see the darkness, through the cracks.

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I can see the darkness, through the cracks.

Jax couldn't even say the last time he'd felt so much joy in life. There was so much that had threatened to tear into him, to sink claws into his heart and rip away the things that mattered. Those hard days made the good ones all the more precious. In the last six months, piece by piece, his life seemed to have fallen into the right order. He had Tara. He had his boys. They were far enough away from all the club shit that they finally had a real chance to start over new.

Every day made it a little more real. The dog, Macha, had been one of the first things. Then the ring. Then the offer on the house that had finally, really suited them. Maybe it was a little cliché, the 2.5 kids and the house with the white picket fence, but he didn't care.

For the first time ever, he'd been on the receiving end of Father's Day. He'd woken that morning to two smiling boys and Tara and they'd all had breakfast in bed. Maybe it was just toast and bacon, but he felt like he'd eaten like a king. The lull in the storm of moving and packing had been welcome, made him breathe a little easier.

In high spirits, he and Tara had dropped off the boys with a sitter so they could tackle the last bit of packing before they had to rent a van to take all their shit to the new, bigger house just outside of the city. Despite having only lived in that apartment for about nine months, Jax constantly marveled at the amount of shit that had accumulated.

Nearly overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending packing, Jax had grabbed Macha's leash and said he was going to take her for a walk. The poor girl had been getting antsy anyway, already developing the famed energy that adult pit bulls possessed.

A half hour's walk had gotten him to feel a little more settled and Macha plenty worn out. Carrying her in his arms, Jax walked up to their apartment.

Then he saw the door hanging open and something dropped in his stomach.

"Tara?" he called. No response.

Dread building, he opened the door and almost dropped to his knees when he saw the kitchen. The nearly emptied room was now a wreck with dishes in need of washing thrown helter-skelter. The smell of old blood hit him full in the nose and mouth and Jax almost couldn't register the smears of blood all over the floor and pooled in the sink. Distantly, he noticed a large meat fork, dripping with old blood.

On the floor in front of him, there was a file that sent Jax reeling. Its file tab read, "Knowles-Teller, Tara."

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Neither of them had really ever experienced this before. A normal life, or as close as you could get. The jobs and the kids and the house and the car, the dog and getting engaged and it was like they'd always said they'd make it be. She's no longer living with the weight of unconfessed sins on her shoulders, and it's brought a whole other aspect of happiness to both of their lives. They'd talked about growing their family, and Tara feels none of the crushing regret and fear that she'd felt when they'd talked about it months ago.

Jax'd just left when Tara's phone rang - she used the chance to snag one of Jax's cigarettes and slip down the back stairs. Yeah, she'd mostly given up smoking, but there were just some times that she wanted one, and now was one of those times. Allison was talking about her going to the coffeeshop to decompress from having Thomas and Abel both being special, but Tara didn't want to leave - not when this was the first real father's day they'd get to have together.

Instead, Tara talked to her, only getting off the phone when her cigarette was gone and she realised just how long it'd been. She walks back upstairs humming softly under her breath, a smile spreading on her lips moments before she realised the door to their apartment was standing open... and then the smell hit her.

Memory's a funny thing. Later, she won't remember running those few steps even though she's certain she did. It'd come in pieces, in pieces and her mind'll fill in the gaps, but she feels like she knows what she'll see. That this will be shattered, that Jax will be dead on the floor for some reason because the smell of blood is so strong--

Tara skids to a stop, staring at Jax sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with papers in his lap, Macha pressed against his side and there's a dark spot of blood already on her tail. Photographs - her brain couldn't process what they were yet, they were upside down - scattered on the floor... and blood. Blood, everywhere. Spattered on the walls, smeared on the floor, the counter and sink covered with it, a carving fork (it was from Macy's she'd gotten it on clearance for $4.99 before Thanksgiving two years ago) on the floor.

It made no sense, and she just... stares down at him, trying to find words.

Murderer unknown. Suspect (Jackson "Jax" Teller) cleared. Murder weapon gone from scene. Likely a sharp object. All of it swirled sickly around Jax's brain and he wasn't sure if he wanted to cry or throw up or fling himself out of the apartment and run until his knees caved in. Someone had killed Tara. Taken her away from him and who even fucking knew if he'd even had a chance.

"I didn't kill you," he muttered. "I...Fuck..."

He could hear Tara's footsteps, feel her behind him. Somehow, she seemed to have gone far away beyond a place where he could follow.

It meant he failed. The man, or the monster he'd become, had tried so hard to fix the club and their life and it had all been for fucking nothing. Nothing in the face of a concussion and a sink full of water and a turkey fork. It was crueler than even the club would have chosen.

"I'm so sorry...I'm sorry..."

It made no sense to her. The pieces - you put them together and she got a jumble of confusion, a furrowed brow and a logical mess to her. Her brain took the pieces given and couldn't make them come out in any way that made sense even though they weren't that hard. The blood, the file, the way Jax sat on the floor like he didn't even know she was there.

Like maybe she wasn't there.

"Baby?" she breathed the word, and her brain's running from the pictures on the floor, the ones she's staring at even though she should be staring at Jax. They're upside down and some are in color, brutally red and others were in black and white.

She recognized that shirt.

She was wearing it when she'd shown up here. Oddly, it's the shirt she can actually recognize - the rest of it, she can't even understand, and she stares down at it, numb. She's the color of milk, and the one word she's said - she's asking after Jax, but his name doesn't even come.

Like a fearful Orpheus, Jax turned his head slowly. His eyes took in Tara's feet before scaling up. Even then, he was afraid to breathe, as if she might vanish from him if he so much as moved. He would deserve it, for all his failures.

"I'm so sorry, Tara," he said again. "I..."

He searched for some remark, some comment about how it was a good thing she'd come to his door, but right now his whole throat felt choked. Shaking, bloody fingers reached out to her.

"You were gone and I walked in the door. Babe, I thought..."

He couldn't even vocalize what he'd feared because he already knew, in some other life, it had happened.

She's all pulled into herself, her very breath shaking as she stares down at the pictures, and she shuffles forwards a step, then two, but she can't not look at them.

"I was-" Her eyes are shiny as she stares down at them.

"Your mother got what she wanted." She exhaled the words in a breath, and that was when she realised the blood - the blood that covered the kitchen, that it was hers. it was hers, and she covered her mouth with her hand and the noise she made...

It was a strangled sort of sob, and she can't reach for his hand because she's on the edge of hysteria, she's trying not to throw up, she's shaking where she stands. That's her shirt. Her shirt from the night she came here.

There's so much blood. "File," she finally said. "I- Show me." She knows already what she wants to see. Not the police report. Not the photos.

The coroner's report.

"My mother..."

Somewhere in the haze, it penetrated. This death...this senseless, violent, messy death. It wasn't the club's style, nor was it the premeditated fucked up bullshit he'd seen other gangbangers do. It had been improvised and personal.

Numbly, he handed over the file, already knowing the only person who could have done this, who would have done it in this way.

"My fucking mother..." He tried to summon up anger, but it sank down beneath the numbness and grief. Even though Tara was right there, he still ached for what had become of them, what had been predestined by some fucked up path of fate.

She's not as far as he is. She can't be, because she's flipping through the blood smeared papers until she finds it. She knows what it looks like; she's had to review them before, from the patients who have died at St. Thomas. She knows.

She sees it; she sees the date and she makes a sound that he's only ever heard her make once before, when he'd shot Kohn in front of her. When she'd crept close a lifetime ago, and stared down at his body and she made a sound like a trapped, wounded animal - and she makes that sound now and she's shaking. She's shaking like a leaf, and the blood covering their kitchen, the blood smearing the paper and the file and Jax's hands and Macha's tail, it's all hers. It's all hers and the carving fork - 4.99 at Macys last year - she knows.

Gemma got her sons. Jax got his sons. The club got free from RICO. Everyone got what they always had wanted, didn't they.

"I knew I was dead." She whispered the words, pitchy and half-high. "I told you, I didn't matter anymore. It was the boys, and I couldn't- I couldn't even save-" She's having trouble being coherent, and she makes that noise again as she tries to muffle the sound, staring down at the pictures on the floor.

Jax tried to find words, but he could only match her in that lost, wounded-animal sound. He reached out to her only to see the blood across his hands and let them fall, closing his eyes and leaning forward. "That's not..."

He couldn't say the words. It was as if hanging them in the air gave them real power, could seal a contract that would steal Tara away.

"None of this...none of this is on you." She'd been right. Maybe Jax hadn't been the one to do it, but it felt like his fault all the same. Worse still, he could pinpoint it to the day he got out of jail, the day when he'd been too proud to let Tara's money take them away to their new start. What had it gotten them? They'd lived too long in Charming, too close to Gemma and Clay's poison.

"This is my fault."

"It's all on me," she breathes the words as she stares down at the pictures. At the photographs, at the blood on the floor.

"It's all on me, Jax. I- I should have been smarter," and the words sound angry, they're panicked, and Macha's whining as she looks up at Tara, her head still pressed against Jax's leg. The smell of it- it's the smell, and she realises... the shirt.

And the fork. The fork is covered by darker things, worse things, and Tara moves in a flurry to the bathroom, and she barely makes it in time before she throws up, kneeling in front of the toilet - and she starts to cry, leaning against the wall as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand as she curls up as small as possible.

All of it felt like swimming through syrup. In any other situation, he'd have followed Tara with a matching speed but now he moved slowly, reluctant and nervous. In a distant, analytical place, Jax already knew he had a pretty damn good guess at whose hands had accomplished the deed, but he couldn't bring himself to speak it.

Because too, at the end, he had failed. He'd failed to follow up on his promises, to leave the club behind. He'd killed everything he loved.

"Tara..." Finally, he was in the bathroom doorway, afraid to touch her with the blood–her blood-sticky on his fingers.

She's still crying, broken sobs that have a that odd noise, that animal noise as she's curled on the floor, pressed against the wall. She should know his footsteps, his gait, she should hear his voice, but she doesn't, because she's dead. She's dead, she's dead, she died the day after she left, and their sons-

Their sons. She finally can push herself up, her hand on the wall, and Tara's taking big, gulping breaths. "I did this. I did what I did to save them." Her words are thick and enraged because it's all for nothing, it's all been for nothing. "Do you know what will happen? Do you?" She's regained her feet, and she's so overwrought, so upset because it was all for nothing. All of it. She's dead. She's dead and he did this to her and her hand grasps at the counter and closes around the box that holds her makeup.

She does, somehow, have the presence of mind not to throw it at him. It explodes against the wall by the bathtub, bits and containers flying everywhere and all she can do, all she can think is that she's dead. It's followed by a glass tumbler that explodes against the wall, and finally her hands find the edge of the counter and she's barely able to hold herself there as she's still crying with big, gulping breath. "Everyone got what they fucking wanted didn't they? At least the club's safe from RICO, right? I gave everything for them, and it didn't matter because now your fucking mother can play house, that's what everyone wanted."

Edited 2014-06-26 00:17 (UTC)

The whole sound of it hurt more than anything else and the fact that he just didn't have the words. What good did it do to reassure her that things were okay here when this fucking demon had just leaped onto their backs? It was so dark and fucked up, more so because he knew that in the end Tara was right. Even if he didn't think it'd been her hand wrapped around that fucking fork, Jax believed that Gemma would've pushed someone else to do it eventually.

And then the screaming and the throwing, with a vicious animal rage that he'd never seen in Tara. "You think I wanted this?" he couldn't find it in him to shout, to speak in anything more than a monotone. "You think that this is what I'd let happen if I had any say."

He approached her, slow and quiet. "Tara...My fucking mother isn't here and this...fuck. I..."

It was a warning. This was the sign he'd needed to keep him out of club life, because that was what would become of their family if he'd stayed.

She looked at him, her eyes dull and her hands curled around the edge of the counter with white knuckles, her voice rasping as she tried to find the right words. "I think the man who I left," she somehow was able to pick her words with care, because all she wants is to weep and cry and beat at him and find his mother and put her down, but that care immediately starts to slip away. "was so blinded by his love for the club-" Her voice cracked.

"He didn't want me to have our sons, and- I told you." She swallowed deeply. "I don't think he'd have it happen like this," she said after a second, and her eyes well with tears. "He'd- I've thought about it. I've thought about it, and I think you would have said you loved me and you were sorry and then shot me in the head."

She said it so carefully, so clearly, even as her chin wobbled and she kept looking away and then back at him, like she couldn't just keep his gaze. "But- But you couldn't allow that. For me to rat. even if it was to save our sons. It's the club. It's always the club, you have to do what's best for the club, I don't know why I even thought- I wondered. You know that? I wondered a long time ago if you would really love me enough to leave it, and I knew then. I knew." It's a stream of words; a stream of words in the end that's not even to him, it's to herself, because she doesn't blame him. Not really. She knew, and she should have done better. She should have been smarter, she should have taken her sons and run farther and faster and there had to be a place on this earth that the MC couldn't find them.

She should have rolled on the club in the very beginning, and not carried around that goddamned bullet. She was weak. She was weak and now she was dead, and as she watched him, as she talked Tara was rocking forward and back on her heels, and she is holding onto herself only through sheer force of will that's rapidly crumbling.

It was just one more punch after the other, the fact that Tara had thought about exactly how she would have been executed. That she knew the club well enough to realize that that was exactly how he would have done it, unless a crime was just too heinous to dispose of so neatly. And Tara knew. Worse, she'd come to terms with that, figured out how it would happen.

"I would've found a way..." Jax said, trying to believe it as much as he needed her to. "There's a lot of fucked up shit I've done, for the club. For the kids. For our family. But the thing you're talking about? That...that's the last resort after the last resort."

And none of it mattered because Gemma had got there first. He knew how his mother fought and how his mother killed and it didn't take a fingerprinting kit to see that her touch was all over this. She'd always been the Queen in her own head, acting beyond her role in the club because she'd never known her own place.

"God we..." He only had enough presence of mind to turn the tap and let water run through the tub. "I can't be in here right now."

She stared at him, and there was disbelief in her eyes. It was colored by everything she'd seen, everything they'd done. "Clay had the cartels try and kill me and they crushed my hand and took my job away from me, I'm an accessory for first degree murder, it killed everyone else you care about, and your mother flipped her SUV with our sons inside because she was high, Jax, and you- you had them watch me. You wouldn't let me be alone with our sons, but them living with your mother and Wendy, that was fine." Her eyes are shiny as she speaks. "Does that sound like you even loved me, anymore? I was going to turn on the club, that's- You would have done it, and you- You would have done it. Not like this. This wasn't you. But-"

"I have always loved you too much." Her voice had dulled as she said the words. "I should have left. I should have left, I should have run further, Jax. I should have run as fast and as far as I could. If I was more-" She shook her head slowly, and her face crumpled. "Our sons have no mother," she whispered, and he says he can't be here and she doesn't understand, she thinks he's leaving her, not just the fact that their kitchen is painted in blood and there's pictures of her dead body all over the floor.

This is not her most rational moment. She looks away from him and she nods once, and it's like it's happening again except she's so hurt, she feels like she'd look down and see herself bleeding and he hasn't come near her even once. She did this. She should have been better, somehow, should have fought harder.

Jax's face contorted and angry words started in his throat. He wasn't Clay, no fucking way was he his fucked up step-dad! But the words died because what the fuck did it matter that Jax wouldn't do that because other people in the club already would and had. On top of that, he'd gotten a taste of the same disease and kept Tara trapped.

He'd gone so damn far away from the man who would have let Abel walk away in Belfast.

"I should have helped you run," he said dully, because that was what would have been best for them, for his wife and children. Instead, he'd become so selfish.

Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the tub and let his hands fall into the water. "Can't be in this apartment...I. Jesus. There's so much blood out there and it's...We gotta get out of here."

She saw the anger on his face, and her chin quivered as she stared at the wall instead of looking to him. "You should have left all the times you said you would." She's so lost now, without him. She's so lost and in pain, and she's never felt more disconnected from this man. Not her husband, not the man she left behind - but from the man who'd weathered this with her, not caused the pain.

"It's mine," she whispered when he talked about the blood in the kitchen, and her voice is so small, it's a whisper of breath, and she's covering her mouth with a shaking hand. "M-My blood's all over the kitchen, Jax, I-" She doesn't know what to do, she's terrified because the thing they're both not saying - even he's said it to her, when she'd been so worried about Abel, about Abel in the van --

And she's heard it before, murmured, talking about how you go back, and she knows what's waiting for her, and she's terrified. She's terrified of this now, of their lives, of what will happen - and that their kitchen, here, it's covered in her own blood, and she knows how she dies.

She knows what death will bring, and she says it again, in that barely a breath, too-high pitched tone. "Our sons have no mother, Jax. I- I- Why? Why- I just- I tried to save them-" Tara's so lost, now, she doesn't know what to do. She's got no bearing, no center - he's always been her anchor, but both of them are wildly spinning in confusion, now.

"I know..." There was little else to say and the words crept out of him, mournful and apologetic. He hadn't become that man but responsibility fastened its yoke over him. His life and Tara's were always going to be twined together and yet here they were, cut short and cut apart. The blame lay at the feet of his actions. Or his inactions. Both were his fault.

"That's not gonna happen here." Could he really promise that? Already he knew what Tara would encounter if she ever went home. There were two nebulous little boys in the world they'd left who would grow up without her. Raised in the club, Jax knew already what was to come.

To my sons, Jackson and Thomas. May they escape this life of chaos.

...

To my sons, Abel and Thomas...

How could he promise not to let that happen?

"They can't...We can't leave here. We can't let that happen to our boys. Not here..."

There's a point when Tara realises he's not going to come to her, and she doesn't know why, she doesn't know if it's because she's done this, because she made this happen or because of the pain or what, but when she realises that it's not happening, that if she wants to not be alone, it's her going to him.

And she does, because she's terrified. She's terrified of being alone, of thinking about what's outside their bathroom, and Tara goes to him, the two steps away from the sink and her hands are on his kutte as she makes herself as small as possible, not even hugging him but just holding onto him like she'd burrow inside of him rather than face the world. Hands that saved his son grasp the edges of his kutte like life-lines, and she can't do this. She doesn't know what she's doing, and her voice breaks in a ragged gasp. "I can't- I'm dead, Jax-" The last three words are whispered and strangled as if her voice has to crawl out of her throat.

"No..." Jax muttered. Wet arms, free of her blood, circled around her and held her tight. Tara was still there, real and warm and alive and he'll give his own life before he sees hers cut short. No more.

This blood serves as a warning. For once, Jax means to listen.

"Not here you're not." He grasped her more tightly, clinging to her with all his might. "And you won't be."

"It's the day after I came," she said into his shirt, and she's almost pulling him close even though there was no getting closer, no getting closer without the two of them melding into one person. "It's- I thought it. You remember, I thought- When I didn't know you were you, oh my god, I knew-"

She started shaking her head, and all she can do is murmur- No, no, no- over and over, and she doesn't know what to do, now. How to save herself, to save him, how not to know every minute that she should be dead now. That their son - that Thomas never knew her, the way she was now. That she never saw him even have his second birthday.

Jax shook his head too, reaching up to cup Tara's chin and tilt up her head so their eyes locked. "The day after you came here, I got to know my son. We went out for pancakes. The day after that, you went to the hospital. There's been so many fucking days after the day you came. And I don't..."

He breathed in, trying to stay calm. "I don't fucking believe that this is it. That this is the end. We got a life here Tara. A real one."

"The day-" Breaths come in fits and starts, gasping, raw sounds because she's struggling to breathe to exist, to live. "The day after I came, I ended up back home, and they d-drowned- and hit me- and they-" She can't say it, she can't. She can't say what she read on that report, can't talk about why there's the meat fork laying on the floor of their kitchen. Shaking uncontrollably, Tara stares up at the man who is somehow the closest and farthest thing from all of this. "I gave up everything. I gave up my life, and my freedom and my sons, and you for this club and-"

As she stops, her eyes are full of confusion. Fear and pain echo with deeper hurts, and the things he's saying make the impact of coins dropped down an empty well. They fall and fall, and make no sound if they ever hit the bottom. She knows just as much as he does who's responsible; it was his mother, or Wendy, or Juice. There's other people in the club who would have pulled that trigger; Tig, Happy, or even Jax.

But not like this. Never like this.

"Now you know why I was afraid." The day she'd arrived, she'd put their sons to bed, she'd told them that she loved them, and she kissed them and when she walked out of their bedroom, she'd expected to die. She expected Jax, not knowing he wasn't the man she'd married, to kill her.

The fear's starting to bleed away, and everything makes less and less sense. The horror is sliding to more confusing things, because she can't handle the sum of the parts of what's happened. She can't process any of it, because she keeps circling one simple truth; she's dead. She's dead, her sons have no mother, and Jax will never escape. Gemma has her boys, her sons, and the things they'd started here? The ground they'd gained, the hurts they've healed? That would never happen. There would never be another Teller, the baby that Jax said was all he'd wanted, to grow their family and do it right.

There would never be a day when she'd take Abel to his first day of school, she'd never see Thomas grow up. The son of her body, the only child she would ever have because she's dead and it's absurd but she remembers what somebody told her. She can't remember anymore if it was Gemma or Jax, but it hits a nerve. It hits this place inside of her that says that's hilarious, and Tara exhales in a sort of hysterical laugh that's more breath than sound and half a sob all the same. "I guess in the end, I was a Teller, right? Because you don't die easy, you die bloody?"

Edited 2014-06-30 03:24 (UTC)

"Tara..." His voice broke, all the pain of it bubbling through him as he sought out the words, the promises that would heal this. How could he? The scent of death filtered through. The blood spread out in the beds of his nails, rusty frost patterns fraying into the lines of his fingers. Tara's blood. What could he say?

She was right there in front of him and Jax was mourning. He looked at Tara and saw a tombstone, grand and majestic and so, so tragic. He looked at Tara and saw her blood on his hands, knew that the perpetrator was only half responsible. He'd murdered the only woman he really loved by his inaction.

"You're still alive here. This...I don't want that future." His voice was wrecked and the tears started. "You're alive..."

She's bordering on hysteria because she doesn't have the one thing that Jax had always been for her. He always had been her anchor, and without him - without him, with him in a tailspin just as he is, they're both out of control. He's in pain, he sees her as a tombstone, and she sees nothing.

Tara is blind to him, to herself. She can't stop the way she feels so far away, the way he's crying and she can't even comfort him, she doesn't even see it in a way. She can't see how upset he is because all she can see is her own death, overwhelming every other emotion she could possibly have. "I'm dead, Jax. I'm dead, I was laying- I was on the floor, and they found me next to the s-sheriff and I'm dead. Our boys have no mother, I- I have no- There's nothing. I'm n-nothing now-" She's staring at him like she doesn't even see him, and the trembling is a clue (as is everything else) to just how bad of a state she's in.

"You're alone." Numb. She was numb now, because Jax... he was alone. He'd never been a man who could be alone, and he's lost her and Opie and everyone else, and it's just him and Gemma, Chibs and Bobby.

Her mind goes two places at once. She wonders, absurdly, if the guys will be glad.

If it will make their lives easier.

Juice hated her in the end. He saw her as a traitor, but somehow Tara knew that Chibs would cry for her, and made her pull in a thick breath.

The other place- the other place is one that she shouldn't go - where she wonders, idly, ridiculously, how long it would take him to move on. For there to be a parade of croweaters through his bed while their sons grow up with their grandmother and junkie mother and that's when Tara just knows, she knows what will happen and it makes the nausea come back like she's been hit by a truck.

"You'll go to Wendy." She breathes the words, and she covers her mouth with her hand and she honestly may throw up, but her face twists, and somehow it's the thing that tips her over again into sobbing. Into wishing-- wishing this... She has to be here. She's got to be in this place or she's dead, but it hurts so much. It feels like her heart's been torn out. "You know that? You'll go to her because you can't ever be alone, god- oh, god." It's like a goddamned train wreck and it's getting worse and worse and she's breathing too quickly now and can't handle it, taking deep gulping breaths way too fast but she can't stop.

"No! I wouldn–" Jax stopped cold, hanging his head, knowing it wasn't true. He'd gone to Wendy, to Helen, to those hundreds of girls, out of loneliness as he searched for a connection like the one he had with Tara. Had had anyway. If anything could sever their connection, this was it. Already, he felt like he was grasping at the edge of her jacket as he ran away without taking a step.

"Wendy's not..." Forgetting his bloodied hands, Jax threw his arms around Tara and pulled her close, tried to give her sobs a place to rest. Whatever he did do back home, he told himself, it was different here.

"You and me, Tara. We're still alive and I...I gotta believe that this isn't set in stone. This is some kind of sign...a warning." He let his head drop down, forehead against the crown and scalp of her head. "We're not alone here. That file don't make any mention of this place. It's not the same and it sure as shit isn't going to be how we end up."

It was more prayer than promise that made him take her shoulders and look her in the eye. "You and me Tara. We've gotten through so much shit. We'll do it again. Take this sign and...and..."

And make sure it never happened.

He couldn't bear what had arrived, knowing that Tara was alive next to him. That body on the floor would never happen. Not here.

She looks empty.

He takes her by the shoulders and she looks empty, her eyes swollen and red, a thin line of blood streaking her cheek. "Okay," she says dully, because she can't. She can't, it's too much. Because it kills her, that her sons will have no mother. That Jax will have no one to center him, to help him because Opie's gone and his mother is toxic and Wendy's a user, a drug user and a user of people and god. Abel will grow up and she's his mother, and she wants to hurt someone, to smash something, but the feelings are distant from her right now.

"How do we do this? How..." She sounds almost drugged, she's so broken right now. "How do we have a family, Jax? How do we add to it, knowing what's going to happen?"

"I don't know." It's the truth, hollow and heavy. Daring to have hopes and dreams holds the implication of blasphemy, of being so disgustingly profane to the darkness of their real lives. Quietly, he holds onto Tara, searching for that anchor and trying to throw one out to her.

"Same way people do anything when life's shit. Just do."

There's no comfort in it, just resignation.

Dully, somewhere, he hates to hope.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can see the darkness, through the cracks.

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