This is actually really hard for me to write, considering that I am heartbroken and pissed off and really strongly affected by what has happened to my OTP above all other OTPs. However, I was really inspired by VDStar's "Final Embrace" and I just knew that I had to write this...
Songs (that I cried to):
A Great Big World-"Say Something"
Noah Gunderson- Family
Laura Marling-"Rest in the Bed"
Dave Baxter-"Whispers"
Imogean Heap-"Hallelujah
And of course: Noah Gunderson and The Forest Rangers-"Day is Gone"
Highly recommend you listen to Tom Odell, "Heal". If nothing else, this song is magic.
Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
-Dylan Thomas
Looking down, Tara can see her body laying prostrate on the floor and at first glance she looks as though she could be in a deep slumber, it only takes one cursory turn to see that what she really is...dead. Throwing her hands up to her mouth, Tara walks over to her body in shock. The scene is something out of a horror novel, blood splattered across the cabinets, deep red rivers pillow her head, and all Tara can feel is the utter silence of her dying place. In all of her wildest nightmares, never did she believe that this was how she was going to die. In the deepest recesses of her damaged heart, Tara always hoped that she would die when she was old and grey, holding the hand of her beloved, surrounded by love. Instead, she was murdered. Brutally. Alone. Far too soon. At the precise moment that Tara was beginning to feel hopeful again, the rug was yanked out from under her tired feet. After feeling nothing but searing, torturous pain, she suddenly ceased feeling anything.
Walking over to the kitchen table, Tara pulled out a chair that she had sat in a thousand times before and is hit with the stark sense that this is probably the last time she'll ever do this again. Death wasn't something that Tara ever used to fear, as a doctor she faced death in the face every day and more often than not came out on the other side. This is a different animal though, she is not going to suddenly wake up, shake it off, and kiss her family to pull herself out of the despair...this was the end, her end. Her sweet, innocent boys will grow up the same way she did, without their mother. Everything she has done that has merited her place on the floor was done so that her boys could have the chance to grow up in a better world, surrounded by security and love and normalcy. Normalcy is coming home to toys littering the floor, not their dead mother's cold body. Her only comfort in this moment, is that her boys knew how much she loved them, and one day they will know the truth and it will set them free. Free to become whoever and to do whatever it is their wildest imaginations can dream up.
Tears are streaming down Tara's face as she remembers every moment she has had with her babies, the pitter patter of Abel's feet as he chases her about the kitchen, dodging around the very table she occupies, screaming out, "Mommy!" She remembers Thomas's cries in the middle of the night and how they immediately ceased once he caught sight of his mommy. How she rocked him gently, reveling in the moment he burrowed his little head against her neck as she sang him a lullaby. The utter sense of injustice strikes Tara hard in this moment, that these amazing little humans who she was so blessed to claim as hers, will grow up without her. Thomas will grow up without a single memory of his mother, and Abel will eventually forget his. Tara will become but a whisper through the wind, floating sporadically in and out of their lives in hushed tones and cautious glances until the day she adjourns to the recesses of their minds, just a small chapter in the very large of book of things that have happened to them.
Shaking her head softly, Tara pulls herself out of her memories, and lets out a weak breath of air intermingled with soft a cry of "Jackson..." She hasn't allowed herself to go here yet, choosing instead to focus on the far more gentle memories of her children, who aren't yet to the age where they can break her heart like their daddy. When you are young, you believe that love is pure and can conquer all that dare defy it. It is only once you grow up do you realize how difficult and dark it can become, how it twists and manipulates the person you thought you were and suddenly you're looking in a mirror and you have become unrecognizable. The words that you say become lies, the actions you commit become heinous, and the values you once believed in are bled out of you slowly, but surely. The process is slow, which is why you are unable to recognize when it is happening because it has already happened.
The love that I shared with Jackson Teller was the deepest sort of this love imaginable, and that is the very reason that our love killed me. We fell in love when we were but children, naïve in our tender 16 years, uncontrollable in our passions. From the moment that I met Jax, I knew that nothing would be the same. It was as if opening myself up to Jax, opened up the deepest corners of my mind, and all of the sudden I was feeling so much. Anger. Passion. Love. Fear. These became my friends, my confidants when I was clueless as to how to proceed. For three years I lived recklessly, feeding my baser instincts, reveling in every moment that I could spend in the presence of this amazing boy I loved. As the nights grew longer, my bed became colder, the lies more and more unbearable. I went from the center of his universe, to one of many orbiting around his sun. I never doubted that he loved me, but I was sharing his heart with SAMCRO, and he held the entirety of mine in the palm of his hand, and eventually it wasn't enough for me. My purpose in life couldn't be to stand in the shadows and just be an Old Lady, staying silent and raising his babies, ignoring the violence, the women, and the lies. So I left him, I left the man I loved because I needed to learn to love myself more.
Ten years passed when I finally saw him again. The roles different and all too familiar, the same kutte graced his shoulders but now a doctor's coat laid across mine. Each of us with our armor, standing on opposite sides of the line drawn between us when I left. He was as he always had been, a complicated fusion of man and beast, capable of unparalleled kindness and grace and in the same breath capable of unspeakable violence. I pretended that I was different, that the ten years away from Charming had somehow molded me into a new and improved version of my former self, but as much as Jackson was at war with his self, I was at war with mine.
When I came home, I was supposed to be smarter, stronger, Instead, I let myself get swept up in the pictures his words painted, I began to believe in his dreams and made them my own. So many times I should have left him, I packed and unpacked my bags over and over, but I was so weak. I couldn't reconcile that the man I loved and who promised me this beautiful life was dead, gone in the same instant as his best friend. When you lose the people you love, your mind becomes a wasteland. Anger is pushed to the forefront, the desire for revenge pulses through your veins renewing your sense of purpose. For most people, they can push those desires to the recesses of their minds, knowing that they could never deliver the coup de grâce, but the outlaw life provided Jax another medium those people could ill afford. Violence is in his nature, born and bred with a mean streak a mile wide and reinforced throughout his life that hurting someone who hurt you was how to handle conflict. It didn't take much for Jax to recede into his role of aggressor...facilis descensus averno, the descent into hell is easy.
From that moment on it was clear that the man I loved was gone. I could only watch as he metamorphisized into this monster capable of cruelty that I never could have predicted. There were moments where I caught glimpses of the Jackson that I fell in love with, when he hugged his children or joked with his brothers, but that man was dead to me. Our interactions were limited to veiled glances, hard kept secrets weighing on our hearts, the pain we have caused each other serving as a divider. There was no hope left for us, we've used up our allotment of good fortune, the time of Jax and Tara is over.
My greatest regret is that I spent the last few weeks before this refusing to tell Jackson how much I loved him. Regardless of him sleeping with that madam, regardless of the lengths I went to betray him, I should have never let him think that I didn't love him. As I sit here, in the home we created, firmly ensconced in the memories of the life I've had, I am filled with nothing but absolute love. I am filled with the greatest sense of peace because I was blessed to have loved Jackson Teller. I was blessed to be a mother to the most amazing little boys. I was blessed to be a surgeon who spent the career she had saving babies. I have been so incredibly blessed to find joy in a life that says that I should have found none. In this moment, I have to believe that I have fulfilled the purpose I was put on this earth for, even if it means that I suffered along the way.
Jax once said that he thought I was put into his life to get him out, out of Charming, out of SAMCRO. Maybe he was right, or maybe he was incredibly wrong. Maybe we were brought into each other's lives to save each other in different ways. Maybe the people we are destined to be will come after we've left each other's lives...As I look back on my life in the wake of my death, all that I can be sure of is that I, Tara Grace Knowles Teller, loved Jackson Nathaniel Teller beyond all points of reasoning, and one day we will find each other again, when our time has finally come.
A/N: I've had this partially written for a long time now, but I haven't been able to finish it until now. Last week's episode really upset me, in a very unhealthy way because I am too invested in Jax and Tara. So, with the thought that there are only three episodes left I wanted to maybe give some hope that even though horrible things have happened and nothing can bring Tara back, maybe things have another purpose. Maybe it just wasn't the time for them. Maybe all the time they had together was all the time they were destined for. Maybe, just maybe, Jax and Tara will live again but in another place. That's what I believe. So, I hope y'all like it.