Violet / Violent
Part I
A.
She almost became a neurosurgeon.
Before deciding on neonatal, Tara had been fascinated by the brain – still was, really. It was just... amazing – the way the mind worked. From personality, to emotions, to the different ways that people learned, the brain was the ultimate puzzle, the ultimate mystery – especially memory: how it reflected what was most important to an individual, how it could be manipulated, how it could be so limited yet so vast and always slightly different with each and every person. Her own ability to recall was no different.
Too anxious to think of anything else yet too early to go to her interview, Tara drove around Charming, marveling at how little the deceptively sleepy hamlet had changed since she left all those years ago. It had been more than sixteen years since Tara had stepped foot in the town where she had been born and raised. The streets, the shops, the school, the neighborhoods – they should have seemed distant and foreign, but it was just the opposite; they were too close, too familiar. Every landmark was a memory, a landmine just waiting to detonate the life she had carefully constructed far, far away from everything that, in Tara's mind and heart, Charming stood for.
Try as Tara might, there were times when she could recall very little about her own mother. She'd close her eyes and try to hear her voice again, catch a whiff of her perfume – that signature scent that should have screamed this is home, this is security, this is love. Didn't all mothers have that smell? But when Tara thought back to her childhood, to those eight years she had with her mother before she died, she couldn't remember anything. It was just... blank – no lingering trace of the woman who had given her life. And eight years was sufficient time to develop an entire glossary of memories – bits and pieces she should have been able to pick back up and savor years, a decade, a lifetime later, but Grace Knowles was nothing more than a few snapshots and a heart full of regrets for her daughter. This pained Tara to admit – made her sad, yet, as a doctor, especially one who, for a brief time, had studied the human brain so intimately, wasn't a surprise.
It had been her first year as a surgical intern when Tara contemplated and then quickly dismissed the idea of becoming a neurosurgeon. She had latched onto the specialty at first because of its level of difficulty, its rockstar status. Always wanting to prove herself, always needing to be the best, it had made sense, combined with her interest in the brain, to pursue neurosurgery, but then, one day, she was hours and elbows deep into an operation to repair some drunk's head injury after he got loaded and then decided it was a good idea to drive, resulting in not only his own trauma but the loss of innocent lives.
She had been taught that all life had value, that doctors and surgeons did no harm, that it wasn't up to her conscience just her skills to determine who lived and who died, but, as she stared down at the alcoholic on that surgical table, Tara had been repulsed. Maybe it was because it hit too close to home – her own father a raging drunk who had constantly put others at risk by getting behind the wheel while completely blitzed, but Tara had just... checked out. She did what she was told, and performed adequately, but then and there Tara decided that she wasn't meant for neurosurgery. She couldn't break her own back to save the lives of those unworthy.
Rationally, she knew that as a human being, as a woman, as a doctor, she had no business making that decision – who deserved to live and who deserved to die, and, in thinking that way, she was a hypocrite. Those thoughts made her no better than the men and women she was judging and finding lacking. At the same time, however, Tara hadn't sacrificed so much and worked too hard to fix broken people who would just go back out and hurt themselves – and others – all over again – drunks like her father; druggies like Lowell's deadbeat and abusive father; thieves, rapists, and killers – criminals – like the man she had loved so completely, so obsessively, so blindly more than sixteen years ago.
Because, while Tara couldn't remember her own mother, there wasn't a single moment that she had spent with Jackson Teller that she couldn't recall without startling clarity. That's why Charming still seemed too vibrant and alive to her, because it pulsed with his presence. As soon as she stepped foot back in town, she had felt him there with her, beside her – a ghost from her past more palpable than anyone physically in her present, awaiting her in the future. The streets were places where she walked with him, rode with him; the shops were places they used to go together; the school where they met; the neighborhoods where they had spent the majority of their time – either locked away in her small, childhood bedroom or roaming his much larger and ultimately nicer home when his mother and step-father weren't around.
As Tara found herself bringing her car to a gradual, coasting stop and then turning off the engine, she laughed at herself – scoffed, actually, for the gesture held not even a single trace of humor. She could have gone anywhere while she killed time before her appointment: the park to enjoy some fresh air after being cooped up inside a vehicle for so long while on her way back to the place she, quite frankly, had started to believe she'd never see again; a coffee shop for a cup of soothing tea – it wouldn't be a Starbucks – after all, this was Charming: the anti-establishment oasis for small business owners, but she still possessed a nostalgic streak which appreciated those things and people that went against the grain – proof that old habits didn't just die hard; they lingered even after their reason for existing faded into oblivion; her own family home... not that Tara had family left living there... or the graveyard that her parents now occupied. Instead, though, she went to his family home – a glutton for punishment, apparently.
Her toes were cold. Despite the fact that, seemingly like always, it was a cloudless, sun shining day outside – California in all its 75 degrees with no humidity glory; despite the fact that she and Jax had just had sex and she was now wrapped up in his sheets, her toes were cold. Jax, on the other hand, was perfectly content and comfortable, unabashedly naked – his body lounged on its side along the width of his bed. She sat before him, wondering if he'd let her get away with temporarily borrowing a pair of his socks without teasing her too much. Everyone knew the expression 'cold hands, warm heart,' but it was Tara's feet which always made her shiver, and Jax's rendition of the idiom wasn't nearly as clean cut and sweet. Of all the things she could have been thinking about, though, in that moment...
"Give me those," Jax half scolded, half begged her as he startled Tara out her own musings, his fiery hands landing upon her ankles to jerk her legs, which had been folded and pulled in tight so that she could lean against her upraised knees, towards him. Before she could react or even ask what he was doing, Jax threw her a smirk and then slipped the majority of her feet underneath his torso – his skin always hot to touch and reflecting the raging inferno of energy, and emotion, and vitality that lurked just underneath Jax's cool and composed facade of blasé disregard. In pleasure, Tara wiggled her toes, noting how, though he tried to hide the reaction, Jax squirmed slightly. She could feel his ribs moving below his skin. She smiled.
The gesture must not have made it to her eyes, though, because Jax frowned. For a few minutes, however, he didn't say anything, and she allowed the silence to settle heavily upon them. Quite frankly, Tara didn't want to talk... which was a role reversal in their relationship. Usually, she was always the one who insisted upon them using actual words and not just their bodies to express their feelings, but she didn't know how to put into words the emotions that were bombarding her to the point of distraction that afternoon, and she certainly didn't have any idea where Jax's mind was at. He was obviously stewing over something as well – his brow buried, his gaze trained upon his never idle hands. Whether Jax was toying with the club rings he now wore, tumbling a cigarette between his fingers before lighting up, or touching her – always touching her, inevitably touching her, he was never perfectly still, always in movement. Sometimes, and that moment was no different as Jax casually ran his hands past the delicate joint of her ankles and then up and down her calves – each lap bringing his touch just that much higher, closer, further, Tara found herself wondering if the constant fidgeting was subconscious – something Jax wasn't even aware of.
"I am sorry, you know." She looked up, caught off guard both by his words and the sudden intrusion of sound upon their quiet. "It's not that the idea doesn't appeal – just you, and me, and the endless possibilities that leaving could give us. The world is our oyster and all that shit." Tara watched as Jax looked up, finally met her eyes, shook his still damp hair – damp from his exertion while they were having sex just a few minutes prior – out of his face. "But I don't want endless possibilities, Babe; I just want you, and the club. But I want you to have all those opportunities... if that's what you want."
"Jax, where is this coming from?"
She used to talk all the time about the two of them leaving town together – about school, and her dreams, and about becoming a doctor – a surgeon. She'd tell him that she could see him doing all these different things – becoming an author, a counselor, a private investigator – each and every suggestion met with self-doubt and disbelief that cut Tara far worse than every barb and insult that had been flung at her because of her own less-than-encouraging background. But then Jax had patched into the club, and she stopped talking about the colleges she wanted to attend; she stopped suggesting when the best time for them to move away might be. Despite all her hints, and planning, and suggestions, Tara had decided that she wouldn't ask Jax to leave with her, because she didn't think she could handle him saying no. Not now.
But Jax didn't answer her question. Instead, he just lifted a brow in pointed response, his expression challenging but in a soft, even indulgent way. "I haven't said anything about school or leaving in months."
Jax sat up, propping his left elbow against the mattress so he could lean his jaw and chin against his own palm. "Babe, I'm not oblivious. I notice things; I notice you." Involuntarily, Tara felt her breathing start to increase – her chest falling rapidly yet shallowly beneath the sheet still wrapped around her shoulders. "I know you. Something's wrong; something's been weighing on you now for a while. You've been upset about something. Melancholic." Her boyfriend – high school dropout and Samcro's newest member – used words like melancholic, but he still believed he was destined for a life of crime, still thought that he couldn't be anything else, anything more, than his father before him. It made Tara sad, and bitter, and angry – at him, for him. "This is about college, isn't it?" In a rush of relief, Tara exhaled loudly, her entire body seemingly sinking just that much further into the bed behind and below her. "I knew it."
He really didn't, but she couldn't tell Jax that. Not yet. "It's okay."
Tara wanted away from this conversation, so she gave Jax an easy out, but he refused to take it. "No, it's not, Tara. Just because I can't leave doesn't mean that you shouldn't." She startled, already pulling away from him when Jax seemed to realize how what he had said sounded and what her reaction to his words must have been. "No, that's not... I just mean that you should still go to school, Tara. Maybe it won't be San Diego, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, but it'll still be pre-med; it'll still be you doing what you want – accomplishing your dreams, and we can still be together."
Before she could respond, he rushed on, sitting up. "You could commute, or we could get a place somewhere between Charming and... wherever it is that you decide to go to school. Hell, you could even live on campus if you wanted to, and I'd just sneak into your dorm room every night." At the thought of doing something he wasn't supposed to, that mischievous gleam Tara recognized so easily and loved so much found its way into Jax's crisp blue eyes. She just knew that his idea of college had suddenly morphed into one that more closely resembled an all-girls boarding school – Tara wearing a cute, little uniform, living under a curfew, and boys being absolutely forbidden from campus. Of course Jax's idea of dorm life would look like a porn film.
"I'll think about it," she told him only to immediately incite his protests. However, before Jax could say anything else, Tara continued, "we're not going to solve anything right now. You're leaving soon to go on a run, and, frankly, I'm surprised that you want to spend our last few minutes together talking." To emphasize her words, Tara slowly spread her knees apart, allowing her legs to fall and stretch open, Jax instinctively taking the movement as the invitation it was and settling between them, against her – his sheet still the only thing keeping them from skin on skin contact. It was wrong – using sex to avoid their conversation, to distract him, but she and Jax always worked when they were having sex.
That was a part of the problem.
In what seemed like a blink of an eye, Jax had the sheet pulled down to her waist, flipped them both over so that she was now on top, and then kicked the sheet completely off Tara's body before rolling them back over so that he could hover above her. Apparently pleased with himself, Jax offered her a cocky, self-satisfied smile that was far more charming than it should have been. He was still cradled by her thighs, his hands clenched into loose fists on either side of her head as he braced his weight against his forearms. Shifting so that his right hand was free, Jax surprised Tara when he simply spread his palm and laid it low against her abdomen, his fingers spread to reach from one side of her pelvic bone to the other.
"Come with me," he whispered. Suddenly shy and unsure, his gaze dropped from her face to her chest – the tips of her breasts already aroused and puckered in anticipation, in recollection, in awareness. "Or follow us up, I guess." He shrugged, shot her a crooked, half grin. "We'll rent a hotel room, and I'll meet up with you when I can get away." Jax finally met her eyes again, unblinkingly confessing, "I don't want to be without you... even for a few days." The sincerity behind his words made Tara's toes curl. She dug them into the mattress and moaned slightly, her hips involuntarily lifting off the bed. Jax smirked.
But then the hand that rested between them dropped further down her body, and he became serious with intent. "I don't want to be without this," he confessed, sliding not one but two fingers inside of her waiting heat. There was no prompting, no foreplay, but she was ready for him nonetheless. Sometimes, Tara thought that she was always ready for him. Just as quickly as his touch had found her, it disappeared, and then he was slithering the length of his body down her own until he was resting on his knees before her, his face coming to lean against a bare thigh. "Or this." His hot breath was moist against her folds, he nipped her clit once, and then Tara felt him invade her body once again – this time with his tongue. Just as before, though, one second he was there, and then, the next, he wasn't – leaving her restless with need, and want, and impatience. Hands found purchase on her hips, and Tara fluttered her eyes open just in time to watch the pride and possessiveness wash across Jax's face when, with one single, powerful thrust, he pushed home inside of her. "Or this," he moaned, bringing his face down upon her chest and then rolling his neck to the side so that his mouth could greedily latch onto the soft, sensitive flesh of her right breast.
Despite what he asked of her, they both knew it wasn't possible – she couldn't go with him; she couldn't follow him on his run so that the two of them could sneak off and get a hotel room together. Maybe her father wouldn't notice... or care, for that matter, but Clay would flip, and Jax always tried to keep her away from that side – that ugly, dangerous side – of his step-father and club president.
Tara was nearly lost to the haze that was Jax loving her, pleasuring her, when a fist came down upon his bedroom door. Or perhaps it was a stiletto heeled foot. Tara startled – jumping and tensing, though Jax refused to allow her to completely leave the moment. With a pace that never lost its rhythm, he continued to surge inside of her all-too-welcoming body only to pull back and out and repeat the movement over, and over, and over again. "Jax," his mother called. Shouted. Tara could hear the impatience and insolence dripping from Gemma's tone. "It's time to go. Now. Clay's waiting."
"Thirty minutes," Jax grunted.
"Now, Jackson!"
"Twenty," he tried to bargain, but, evidently, his mother was having none of that.
"Get your dick out of Tara and your ass out of that bed before I come in there and drag you out of this house." It didn't matter how long Tara was around Jax, and his family, and the club, she couldn't get used to the crass way that Gemma Teller-Morrow spoke... not only to her but about her. It disgusted Tara.
Either not taking the threat seriously or just not caring, Jax replied, "door's locked, mom."
"And I'll fucking break it down if I have to," Gemma yelled back. "My house, my rules, my god damn door, Jackson. Now, let's go !"
Tara watched as a stubborn streak of determination flashed across her boyfriend's features. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, her body was still very much in the moment, flying quickly towards the release Jax was intent upon giving them both. He lifted his head, set his jaw – his teeth gritting together. The cords of his neck strained, and she at first fought the urge to lift her mouth up and bite against the straining ropes but then followed his lead and said to hell with it. As her lips latched against his throat, one of Jax's hands – his thumb, to be precise – found that little bundle of nerves between her thighs that only he knew so intimately, providing her with that push she needed to climax. Her orgasm triggered his own, and then Jax was collapsing on top of her – his heaviness of weight and warmth familiar and welcome. Tara loved these moments right after the two of them had sex. It was when she always felt the closest to Jax.
He wasn't resting against her for even a full minute before Gemma was banging on his bedroom door again. Swearing harshly, Jax pushed himself up and off of her, climbing out of bed. While Tara desperately searched for something to cover her body with, Jax, ever so cavalier with his nudity and their sex life... even in front of his mother, just wrenched the door open – their combined juices from their releases still coating Jax's now softened cock. Finally settling on just diving for the opposite side of the bed and rolling off of it to crouch upon the floor, Tara hid herself just in time.
"You really want me to go... like this," Jax asked his mother – one arm lifted to brace against the now wide open door, while the other just laid casually by his side.
Gemma shook her head in disgust, yet there was an almost amused smirk upon her lips at the same time. For the life of her, Tara knew that she would never understand Jax's relationship with his mother. "You're a goddamn prick, Jackson." Turning her back on her son, Gemma started to walk away. "Five minutes."
Before she could disappear however, it was Jax who was stopping her from leaving. He grabbed the first thing he could find... which turned out to be a pillow... and held it against his lower body before following his mom out into the hallway. With a backwards glance at Tara who was watching him over the edge of the bed with obvious confusion, he called out, "hey, mom, wait." Gemma paused, crossing her arms over her chest in silent inquiry. "Will you... just look after Tara for me while I'm gone?" Tara winced as she heard her boyfriend's request. For some reason, he just couldn't understand... or didn't want to understand... the very precarious truce she and Gemma managed to get by on with each other most of the time. If they were lucky. "It's just... well, we're fine, but something's been bothering her lately, and it'll make leaving on this run easier for me if I knew someone was..."
Mercifully interrupting him, Gemma agreed, "of course, baby," while lifting a hand to pat her son's rough with shadow and scruff cheek. "Now, get your ass dressed and outside before I change my mind and make you – and your pillow – leave as you are." With a wink and a smirk, Gemma was gone.
While watching the unfortunate scene play out between mother and son, Tara had managed to find some of her clothes, wiggling them on while still hiding behind Jax's bed, so, by the time he turned around and kicked the door shut behind him, her shirt was in place, her panties back on, and Tara was standing to shimmy her way into her jeans. Luckily, Jax was distracted by rushing around and trying to right his own appearance – cleaning himself off the best he could before jumping into his own discarded clothes.
"I really wish you wouldn't have done that," Tara stated, refusing to look up. Instead, she busied herself with tossing his unkept blankets back on his perpetually unmade bed and bending over to dig one of her shoes out from underneath the mattress. "I'm fine. I don't need your mother... poking around in my life."
"She's not going to poke around," Jax refuted. Still keeping her gaze diverted, she listened as he tossed things into a small duffle bag. "She's just going to be here for you if you need her while I'm gone. I wasn't just blowing smoke up her ass, Babe, to smooth things over." And then Jax was right there , hands lifting to cup her face and pull her close. "You know I hate going on these runs. Leaving you. It'll give me peace of mind to know that there's someone here for you when I can't be." She wanted to say that, no matter what she had promised her son, Gemma would never be there for Tara; she wanted to point out that this was exactly why he shouldn't be going on a run, why he shouldn't even be in Samcro; she wanted to demand to know who was going to watch out for him when she couldn't? But Tara didn't utter a word. Instead, she let Jax kiss her. At first, it was just a peck, but, since the very first time he had kissed her, Jax had never been satisfied with just a mere brushing together of their lips, and, as always, he quickly deepened the embrace until the point that it became all consuming – her annoyance, and worries, and very ability to think evaporating. When he finally pulled away, Jax was smiling widely. "I love you," he told her, placing one last, hard and fast kiss against her mouth. "See you soon." And then he ran out of the room, leaving before she could even return the sentiment.
It was several minutes after Tara heard the roar of Jax's motorcycle flare to life and then peel away when Gemma rejoined her. Tara was sitting on the edge of Jax's bed, bent over and tying one of her tennis shoes when the older woman arrived in the doorway, leaning casually against the jam. "You know, I feel sorry for your daddy." There were a lot of people who felt a lot of things for Tara's father, but sorry was not one of them.
She knew that she shouldn't engage with Gemma, knew that she didn't want to engage with her, but Tara was also aware of the fact that Jax's mother wouldn't let her leave until... whatever it was that she wanted to have out was had. "And why's that, Gemma?"
"Because not only did he get stuck with his only child being a daughter, but she turned out to be such an ungrateful whore."
Standing up, Tara sighed. Her heart was never behind these little battles with Gemma – especially not now, but she couldn't back down and not fight with her. If she didn't hold her own, then Gemma would walk all over her. "I've only been with one man. That does not make me a whore."
"Fine. Then you're a slut who gave it up before marriage. That's still not something a father can be proud of."
Tara snorted in disbelief, rolling her eyes. "I've seen your wedding photos, Gemma."
Hands on hips, the other woman demanded, "what's that supposed to mean?"
Brushing by Jax's mother, Tara shook her head incredulously. "Glass houses, Gemma." She continued walking down the hall, through the dining room and kitchen, and out the door without once turning around to see if Gemma was following her or listening to hear what pointed barb was next shot in her direction.
She had long since memorized every bone, every muscle, every ligament, and tendon, and nerve in the human body. Tara was a veritable encyclopedia of medical knowledge. She had a mind for recalling random trivia, and song lyrics, and quotes. And, maybe she couldn't recall even a single clear memory of her mother, but not a second of her time with Jax had faded over the more than sixteen years that they'd been apart... and certainly not the very last time she had seen the only boy – man – she had ever loved. As Tara started her car back up, she swore that she could practically see her nineteen year old self running out of the Teller-Morrow house – so much younger, so much more naïve. Although the image of that girl faded as she drove away, the feelings she inspired did not, and, now, she was on her way to an interview at St. Thomas – an interview that everything hinged upon at a hospital that held even more memories for Tara... memories that she wasn't sure she was ready to confront.
Ready or not, though...