AN: This has been nagging my brain for the past few months so I finally decided to get it out on paper. This will be more narratively focused than my other stories, which are more character studies than anything, and I'm really excited about that. There's going to be a little noir, a little mystery, a little romance. Who knows?

This story sets the date of Tara's dad's death as about a year and a half before S1, and will be wildly AU in some regards while simply moving other bits of canon up a few years. I very much hope you like it.

(For those of you following WDIWWWY, very sorry about the delay in updating. It's just not coming to me. I'm working on it, but I don't want to post anything I'm not proud of. I am a slow writer in general, and I do have a full time job… but rest assured, I want to get it out as soon as I can.)

I burned my life, that I may find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.
—The Alchemist, Louise Bogan

Once, when she was a teenager, the boy she'd been madly in love with had accused her of running away from her problems. She had been furious at the suggestion of it, but she'd been on her way out of Charming, California for months, so her argument hadn't carried much weight. And when she was done with undergrad, when she hadn't needed the in-state tuition and broken home pity scholarships, it was true: Tara Knowles had run nearly clear across the country to Chicago.

And for the past few months as her father lay dying in her childhood home—in between the brief, impersonal phone calls with his doctors at St. Thomas—Tara had been speaking with a host of faculty and supervisors about looking for another job. She liked Chicago Presbyterian; she liked Chicago itself, the balmy summers and the cold bite of winter, the energy that buoyed and thrilled her more than the small town she had grown up in ever had. But at twenty-nine years old, Tara knew herself well enough to know when she was on her way out. And, like the moment when she had gotten her first college acceptance letter in the mail or when in her sophomore year she had decided on a premed track, Tara could pinpoint the exact moment her nomad's heart had abandoned Chicago.

It had started with a letter.

Tara had never known her mother's family; Caitlin Byrne-Knowles had grown up in Northern Ireland, the willful daughter of two devoted Catholics, and had abandoned her home for the sunny shores of America at age nineteen—a short vacation that had turned into a whirlwind marriage within three months and a pregnancy in seven.

"I met your father," she had told Tara at five years old in her lilting voice, when asked about her life before America, "and then we moved to California, and then we had you." She had pressed a gentle kiss to her daughter's forehead. "And that's when my life began. The only life that matters."

Four years later, she was dead. Car accident. And though Tara remembered her mother with nothing but fondness—as a young child, before death and before her father's drinking, she had lived in a home full of love and affection—as she got older she wondered if her mother had intended to smash the guard rail. Wondered if her mother had buried all her unhappiness down deep, where it wouldn't touch her daughter, let it kill her slowly from the inside. Maybe she'd seen the car accident coming and had been too beat down to fight it. Maybe she'd faced it head-on.

Sometimes, when things were bad, Tara wondered: If she'd inherited her mother's wild heart, maybe she'd inherit her fate, too.

She's received the letter about seven months ago, right when things with her father started to get bad, a confluence of fate if she'd ever seen one. It was postmarked from Belfast, from an Amelia Collins. From her mother's sister.

Tara had read it over and over until the words, the shapes of the letters, were pressed like ink on the backs of her eyelids. Amelia was her mother's younger sister. She hadn't spoken to Caitlin since she'd left Ireland. She had a younger brother, too, Sean. They wanted to meet Tara. They wanted her to come to Ireland.

When Tara had finally worked up the courage to call her, when she heard the thick sound of a voice choked by tears on the other end, she had cried, too. She had heard her mother's voice in Amelia's and felt it like a song calling her home.

And that was the impetus: knowing she was not just running, but had a place to run to. She'd mentally checked out of Chicago months ago and asked for a travel placement at a hospital in Belfast. She'd gotten help to slog through all the bureaucratic bullshit, the paperwork, the studying, the qualifications, the work visa, the interviews—and now there was only one thing keeping her rooted in America.

Tara peered through the windshield of her rental and up at the hospital. St. Thomas looked the same as it had when she was a kid. The whole of Charming looked the same.

Her flight had gotten in that morning and she'd come straight from the airport to the hospital. She wasn't planning on staying overnight—wasn't planning more than staying a few hours, actually. She wanted to say her last goodbyes, finish up the paperwork, and turn around and leave without anyone knowing she was here. There were too many bad memories here to risk unearthing.

She shoved her sunglasses on her nose and pulled the collar of her jacket up to hide her face and made her way into the hospital. Tara felt ridiculous skulking around the corridors of this place, immature, like she couldn't get over the pains of her childhood in a town that had probably forgotten her—but still, she took care to go unnoticed.

Finally she stood in the doorway to her father's room; habit had her flipping through his chart and taking it in with her physician's detachment. Nothing on there surprised her. The notes were mostly about keeping him comfortable, not managing his illness. Everyone knew the end was coming.

Tara put the chart away and took off her jacket and sunglasses before she stepped hesitantly into the room.

William Knowles had seen better days, but even looking at the ravages cirrhosis had wrought on his body, she couldn't help but look at him and see the younger man he had remained in her memories. Beneath the illness she could see the vestiges—thick hair that had once been sandy and sun-bleached but had gone gray, the resolute set of his mouth that she'd inherited from him, the broad shoulders built from manual labor that kept their shape even after the weight loss. For the past ten years he'd only existed to her as a voice on the phone—a yearly obligation on their birthdays, the odd phone call to let him know she'd graduated or moved or got a job. But there was her father, underneath it all.

"Hi, Dad," she said, so quietly she wasn't sure he heard her.

He breathed out, a painful-sounding rattle, and turned his head to squint at her. "Who's that?" he said.

"It's me," she said, and crossed the room to stand at the side of his bed. She hovered there for a moment, awkwardly, before taking his big hand in hers. It felt strange. She wondered if she should be more emotional than this, but the truth was, they had been estranged for so long that she had ceased to feel anything more for him than a bones-deep weariness . In the last years she'd spent at home, she'd been the one taking care of him, and she'd never had the child's debt of gratitude. There would be no confronting of her own mortality here, no trepidation how her life would change—her life had changed when she was nine.

"Tara," he said, and she saw a tear caught in the crows' feet of his eye. "Hey, kiddo."

"I'm here," she said, because she didn't know what else to say.

He wheezed again. "I didn't think you'd come. After everything—"

"Don't worry," Tara said. "Don't worry about that. I'm here now. Do you—do you want to talk?"

"No," he said, and smiled at her in a way that turned his whole face kind and open, the way she'd seen it often during his good days. "No, I just want to listen to you."

Tara smiled back at him and squeezed his hand, and she began to lie: "Well, I had a patient the other day who reminded me a lot of you—you know, tough and hard, but with that smile…"

The doctors came in to pronounce the time of death, to prepare his body for the morgue, so Tara stepped out of the room. She had to find the hospital lawyer, tie up any insurance shit, sign any papers. She pressed the tips of her fingers into her eyes and tried to massage away the pressure building there behind them, and was surprised when her fingers came away wet with tears.

He had passed while she was speaking, telling him about a particularly difficult surgery she'd assisted on—she'd seen a shadow pass over his face, and then a smile had tugged the edges of his mouth and he'd nodded with a certain kind of finality and in the space it took her to recognize the look on his face as pride, he was gone.

That—pride—she didn't know what to do with.

"Tara Knowles?" said a soft voice behind her. Tara dragged her hands across her eyes, trying to wipe away the moisture and the images, and turned around, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"Yeah?" she said, forcing a smile onto her face. The lawyer she'd met briefly was standing there with a folder of papers and a sympathetic smile, but what caught Tara's eye was the uniformed man about fifteen feet behind her, who was standing at the nurse's station. His head had snapped up at her name and he stared at her like he'd seen a ghost. "I'm sorry, excuse me just a minute," she said to the lawyer, and stepped around her to say hello to David Hale.

They stood awkwardly apart for a few moments and then he gave her a bracing pat on the shoulder. She couldn't conceal her small chirp of laughter, and to her relief a smile broke across his handsome face and he pulled her into a sincere hug.

"Hey, David," she said as she stepped back from him. "Wow, look at you. Always knew you'd end up a cop."

"Less impressive than a doctor," he said. Her brows knitted together; she cocked her head in a silent question. "Your old man," he said, by way of explanation.

"I guess he's still a frequent visitor to county."

"VIP," said David. His face softened. He had looked at her like that a lot when they were teenagers, like she was a fragile thing, and it had driven her crazy then—when the last thing in the world she wanted was to be stifled by another man. But she found herself grateful for it now; his sincerity, generous and honest, was a rare thing among men their age. "How are you doing, Tara?"

"I'm okay." She stopped herself. "I mean—not really. I'm here for my dad, actually. He just…"

She saw the realization dawn on him. "Oh. Shit, Tara, I'm sorry."

"No, don't be. I knew it was coming for a long time. I guess you probably did, too." Tara gave him a rueful smile and inclined her head back to indicate the lawyer, patiently waiting. "Look, I'm sorry, I have to wrap some things up here."

"Of course. Hey—you staying in town?"

"I don't think I can. I have a lot going on back home I need to take care of."

He didn't look disappointed, but understanding, which pleased her. They had been friends when she'd left, and saying goodbye had been hard—though she'd had more difficult goodbyes—but there was only nostalgia and kindness between them now. That suited her. It would have been hard to come back to Charming and feel the pull of it again.

"Well, don't be a stranger," David said, hugging her again. He had turned his back to walk away when impulse caught her and she called out to him.

"David." He turned around, expectant. "Do me a favor. Don't let anyone know I was here, okay?"

He smiled at her. Shrugged. "Who would I tell?"

"Thank you," she said, meaningfully, and when he'd disappeared around the corner she turned back to the lawyer, prepared to settle the last few matters of her father's life.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Olivia asked.

Tara slid a glass of wine across the counter to her best friend and shook her head. "No. I'm seriously fine. We didn't have the best relationship."

"Still…" said Olivia, popping a cube of cheese in her mouth and following it with a swig of the Malbec. "Two dead parents. That's pretty heavy."

Tara shrugged. The truth was, she had made her peace with the absence of both of her parents long ago. It wasn't as painful as it had been when she was a teenager—when she had no other family and hardly any friends, only the runaway wild love with a boy for whom she'd been tempted to give up her whole life. Things were different now. She was different. "Like I said, we weren't close. And besides, death is different for us. You know that."

"True." Olivia heaved a sigh. Like Tara, she practiced at Chicago Presbyterian, a resident in cardiothoracic surgery. Tara had taken to her right away—she was blunt and irresistibly funny, a bright spot in a sometimes dark line of work. They had gone through their internship year together, a sort of friendship baptism-by-fire if Tara had ever experienced one. "When's your flight again?"

"Eight in the morning."

"Shit. I'm gonna miss you." A sly smile crept across her face. "But the apartment makes up for it."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Tara said drily. She loved her apartment here in Chicago—it was a cozy well-lit walk up in an older neighborhood, the kind of place where neighbors knew your name but not your life story, which suited her well. It was the first place she'd ever gone to the trouble to decorate, to really live in, and it was the only place that had ever really felt like home. She was sad to be leaving it, but it was a relief that Olivia had volunteered to sublet it from her for the year she would be gone. She didn't want to deal with selling off or storing most of the things she owned—and it was nice to know that, however her great Belfast experiment went, she had a place to come home to.

"You know, I'm not surprised you want to go. You've always seemed very Irish to me."

Tara cocked her head. "Yeah? How?"

A mischievous smile crept across Olivia's face. "You know. Like it's always raining wherever you are."

"Oh, funny," Tara said drily.

"Very serious. Very buttoned up."

"I wonder how I stand you, then?"

Olivia leaned back in her chair, spreading her arms out, satisfaction obvious on her face. "Oh, everyone loves me." But her eyes softened and she reached out to take Tara's hand in her own. "And I love you."

"Liv," said Tara, touched.

"I just want you to know, whatever happens with your family—they're not it for you. They're not everything. You have family here. We're family."

"Oh, God," Tara said, with feeling. "I love you, too. I'm going to miss you so much. I don't think I've even thought about it—"

"Tara," her friend interrupted. "Tara. We're surgeons. We have dignity. Please shut up."

And she pulled her into a hug, the tight, bone-crushing kind of hug that could exist only in the same space as real love, and for the first time in her life Tara knew a goodbye that she was determined would not be permanent.

Three months later

"Aunt Tara!"

She wasn't, strictly speaking, Rose's aunt—the five-year old was really more of a cousin—but Tara had found she rather liked the title, and the kids that came with it. Her nieces and nephew were a rambunctious lot, much like their parents, but sweet-natured and full of love.

"Hi, Rosie." Tara kicked Amelia's door closed behind her as her arms were suddenly full of squirming limbs. She pressed a kiss into her dark hair. "Where's your mom?"

"Tara, is that you?" Tara followed the harried voice to the kitchen and found Amelia there, standing over the stove, her hair tied up haphazardly. Tara's breath caught in her throat as it still sometimes did when she saw Amy. She was older now than Caitlin had been when she'd died, and she looked so much like her—the same dark hair and pale skin, same narrow shoulders and long neck—that it still continued to trick Tara's brain, if just for a moment.

But then, Amelia had told her she felt the same way about her.

"You're early," said Amelia accusingly.

"Sorry. Had an easy day, figured I'd come by and help with dinner."

"Make yourself useful, then, grate the cheddar." Tara set Rose down and set herself up shoulder-to-shoulder with Amelia, dutifully grating a block of cheddar until her fingertips were in danger of shredding against the box grater. She had barely finished when Amelia's husband Jack breezed through the kitchen, gave her a warm kiss on the cheek, and asked her to fix a few more settings for the table, please, because he was expecting more guests?

"More?" Tara asked, laughter at the edge of her throat. "How many more people can this family invite to dinner?" She saw a smile flit across Amelia's face at the word family and found herself mirroring the expression. They were a family. They were, in fact, hers.

Belfast had, to her still-lingering disbelief, started to feel like home.

Upon arriving, nearly overnight, she had gone from having no one to having many someones. There were Amelia and Jack and their three daughters, Eleanor and Georgia and Rose (and a son on the way). There was her uncle Sean, barely six years older than her, and his wife Megan and their infant son Harry. More cousins, more in-laws, all of whom swung by the Collinses' house once or twice a month for Friday dinners or Sunday roasts and had treated her like family they'd known all their lives. It reminded her a little of the atmosphere of another family she'd been privy to, once, but without the undercurrent of danger—of loyalty tempered in blood shed, not shared.

"Just the girls' babysitter and her ma," said Jack. "You seen them round town, I think. They own a shop."

Tara set the long table that took up nearly the whole of the dining room's length, and the smaller table in the kitchen for the kids who didn't want to eat with the adults. She sat there with seven-year-old Georgia on her lap and talking idly to Amelia and Jack while they finished preparing the food—

"I've a bit of swelling in my ankles," Amelia admitted as she pulled two dishes from the oven, though at the seven month mark this was not particularly suspicious.

"Normal swelling? Like with the last three?"

"Aye, like that."

"Sit down, then," Jack interrupted, and stood as if to relieve her. Amy swatted at him with an oven mitt.

"Stay back, you oaf, I've a delicate dish here—"

"Cottage pie? Delicate?"

Tara hid her smile, and pulled her arms tighter around her niece.

The kitchen door opened and in a moment Tara felt a hint of scruff on her neck, smelled the soft sandalwood cologne that Finn favored, and she twisted her head around to receive a kiss from her boyfriend.

Tara's heart thrilled, just a bit, watching Finn give his hellos to Amy and Jack and the girls. He was a boyhood friend of Jack's and she had been reluctant to date him, her relationships with her family still so fragile, but Amy had fairly forced the two of them on a date and that had been it for her. Their relationship was still in its early days, but by all accounts he was everything she was looking for: smart and accomplished (a bioengineer), handsome (with lightly freckled skin and stormy gray eyes), and genuinely good hearted (she only had to see him with the kids to realize it).

"Hello, love," he said. "Sean around?"

"Not yet," she said.

"You'll have to do, then," he said with another kiss, and as he sat beside her Georgia crawled from Tara's lap to his. "Georgie, you're looking more beautiful than ever. How old are you now, twenty-six?"

Tara hid a smile as she watched them, but her eyes caught Amelia's and her aunt gave her a knowing sort of look. The kind a mother would give a daughter.

There was a knock at the door then, but the guests must have been familiar around the house because there came the sound of the door opening and closing soon after. Around the corner appeared a young redhead and an older—although still quite young—blonde woman.

"Hi darlin'," said Jack, embracing the both of them. "Happy you could come."

"Course," said the girl. To Georgia: "'Lo, little monster."

"You've not met our cousin Tara, have you, Trinny?"

"I haven't," she said, and stuck her hand out. "I'm Trinity. I look after these little hellions."

"Nice to meet you," she said, standing. "Tara."

"And this is her mum," said Jack. The blonde woman gave her a small smile. Tara could see a tattoo on her breast, just peeking out from the edge of her shirt, but couldn't make out the design. "Maureen."

"Hi, love. I've heard so much about you," she said, and pulled a rather surprised Tara into a warm hug. "You're from a long line of good women, you know."

"Did you—did you know my mother?" Tara asked as she drew back.

"Oh, no, I didn't have the pleasure. But everyone round here knew of Caitlin Byrne."

"Oh, stop," said Amy with a roll of her eyes. "All anyone knew of her was that she broke my parents' heart and disgraced the family name."

"Aye, and what an inspiration she was to us all." Maureen winked at Tara and she found herself smiling back at her. The truth was she loved these small stories about her mother. In California Caitlin had been loving and affectionate but solitary, a woman who seemingly only existed in the spheres of her husband and her daughter. Tara couldn't remember her having any friends. But she had continued to exist here in Belfast, in stories passed down of the wayward girl who'd broken her family's hearts to follow her own. It made her feel closer to her mother, somehow, to know about the girl she used to be.

The kitchen door opened again and Sean and Megan came from outside, looking rather harried. "Sorry we're late," said Megan.

"Where's my nephew?" Jack demanded.

"With my mum," she said. "He's running a bit of a fever, we didn't want to bring him out."

"That's fine, then," he said, mollified. "Do you need Tara to check on him?"

She had grown used to this: her family offering her services to anyone who needed them, baby or not. And she didn't mind; her job here in Belfast was slower than it had been in Chicago, and privately she was proud to be held in high regard, to give back to this family as much as she'd gotten from them.

"No, no, she needn't trouble herself—"

"It's no trouble," Tara interrupted. "Really."

Megan shot her a grateful smile. "We'll call you if we need you, aye?"

"Of course. Just let me know."

They were interrupted by Amy dropping the cottage pie on the table, and then the kitchen was a flurry of activity—putting out the dishes, taking their seats, talking over each other in the grand tradition of the family dinner—and as they finally sat for dinner Tara could not help the feeling: she loved—she was in love with—this family, and she knew she would do anything to keep them close.

Tara woke up to a knock at her door.

She wanted to ignore it, but it went on, more insistent, and she worried it might wake her neighbors. So she pulled a flannel robe onto her shoulders as she stumbled through the darkness of her quiet house to the front door and opened it—realizing, as soon as she had done it, that she never would have been so cavalier in Chicago and would probably be murdered shortly for her lack of caution.

But it was the woman she had met that night, Maureen, who stood on the stoop, the hood of her dark sweater pulled up in a vain defense against the rain. "Sorry about the hour, love," she said. Tara blinked at her.

"Is everything okay?" Panic descended quickly on her. "Is—is Amelia okay? Is there something wrong with the baby?"

"No, no, everything's fine with the family," said Maureen. "Do you mind if I come in?"

Tara opened the door wider, ushering Maureen in, staring after her in confusion. "Do you…need something?"

"I do, as a matter of fact. You're a doctor, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Tara, slowly.

"You ever patch up a bullet wound?"

She had worked in Chicago, so the answer to that was a resounding yes, but she had no idea why Maureen was asking. "Of course."

"Ever do it outside of a hospital?"

"Maureen," said Tara, "is there something you need me to help with?"

Maureen smiled at her, a grim sort of expression that made her look older and tired but fiercer, too.

"Well," she said, "if you're offering."

Tara had picked up her kit and driven with Maureen to the shop she owned. Ashby's Provisions, read the sign, and it was a quaint little place that seemed as quiet and unassuming as any other on the block. But Maureen had led her through a cramped hallway to the apartment occupying the top floors, and in the kitchen she found a man laid out on the table, blood staining the leg of his jeans, and a leather cut on his shoulders.

She'd seen that cut before.

But surely—there were motorcycle clubs all over the world, and the only one she'd known intimately had been mostly a West Coast club. There was no way—no way—that long-forgotten past had followed her all the way to Ireland, not when she had lost almost everything trying to escape it.

But as Maureen rushed over to him, whispering soothing words, the man groaned and turned into her embrace, and Tara could read the words on the back of the cut.

SONS OF ANARCHY

BELFAST

"Oh, god damn it," she said.