This is how it began. Not consciously, not with injurious intent. Never any of that. Rather and instead, quite instead, it was purity stripped down to its simplest form. The possibility of a thing rather than the thing it became. Beginning in a single moment, the ripe moment in which the seed of potential for all things has its germination.

It became a sharp-edged thing. Both a weapon that destroyed but also a tool that cut her free.

What nourished it to the point of its harvest was something else. This was the beginning.

It was his hands. The square-tipped masculine hands, holding the hemostat. It was his eyes, the serious empathy. Seduced by the slightly ancient hooded look he sometimes wore. Behind her own closed eyelids she could see him aeons ago, on the steppes clothed in skins. It was the tilt of his head, the set of his shoulders, and the sharp-edged curve of his upper lip. The masculine in him that seemed made to define the feminine in her. Call it out. Beckoning to her, from the past and from the present and perhaps, even from the unknowable future.

She had been standing alone, contemplating the pain and horror on the table in front of her. A human being, wrecked. How had she become this angel of mercy? Where were the Valkyries swooping in for their warrior dead? She was holding her breath against the smell of blood, weeping from the ragged artery he had clamped, the thing that would spur her back into action. She was frozen by choice.

And then he reached his free hand out to her, pulling her up beside her. He was the oxymoronic healer in the body which inflicts the wound. The destroyer winged with compassion and concern.

He completed her, shoulder to shoulder they pushed past the hovering death. He applied pressure, she stitched the torn skin, they held the body together with human endeavor. Although she was doctor and he was medic, she found herself bending towards him as nurse.

And each time it happened, she would try to sort it later. The shift in her professional paradigm, the adaptation of something as old as the ocean and the shore. She wondered if he was aware of it at all, the subtle acquiescence. Female to male.

This was how it began. What it became was something else, but in that moment, it was the accident of his being born male, the coincidence of her being female. The synchronistic unseen string that vibrated their cells in tandem. A moment that stretched out between them from the beginnings to the endings of time.

She knew in her private heart of hearts that she was disloyal. And not just romantically, to the small handful of men she had bedded. But to Jax with whom she had shared a fierce and dangerous heart and soul coupling, to her alcoholic father whom she abandoned the moment she was of legal age, to her hometown, her career, her self. The loyalty of the brothers to SAMCRO was overwhelming and bewildering to her. Their blind devotion to the patch, the club, one another a foreign tongue in which she was completely inarticulate.

She also knew, as the child abandoned, that her heart had turned traitor in the days and weeks, months and years, after her mother's death. Loyalty and love would injure you, cut you down to the bone and keep slicing, into the impossible dark and dank ground beneath your feet. It would cleave the earth open and you would be swallowed into the forever night. In her most panicked moments, straddling the void, she knew that she would eventually leave the flesh of her own flesh.

But now, just now, she could feel her blood as it began to warm in her veins, her heart begin to throw itself against its ribcage, her bone marrow quivering. She looked around in cautious surprise for the cause and she saw Chibs. With his dark eyes, his stillness, the wrecked visage of his face, the sloping strength of his shoulders and spine, he called to her. And, after another night alone, another day lost to shame, another joining choking on tears, she decided that she would answer.

She began her tentative reach towards him by actually reaching out for him, touching him. And the first time she let her knuckles trace the long indentation of his spine, she felt him still beneath her hand, a wild thing tamed, frozen in the mere seconds that time trapped between them. She stepped back, out of his heat, and he flexed his shoulders down, rolled his head and continued the work they were doing side by side. After that, she was reaching for him without pause. Gripping his bicep, fingers circling his wrist, pressing her arm into his chest, moving up into his space as though steel called to magnet. And soon, deliriously soon, he began to reach for her. A hand under her elbow, a bending head into hers, a knee against her thigh.

And finally, blessedly, blissfully, without warning, they found themselves alone and he turned to her in the unlit chapel, pulled her into his arms, against his chest, and held her until she thought her heart would burst from the air she was holding inside her lungs. She felt his reluctance as he let her go but now they shared a secret knowledge of how they fit together.

In the Teller-Morrow parking lot, she breathed through her trepidation, hammering heart, clammy palms. She told herself she was looking for Jax. Made herself believe it enough to open the car door, stash the keys, and walk across the pavement as though she had a purpose. A reason to be there. The two men seated at the picnic table under the awning averted their eyes.

The door of the clubhouse was open, music and voices curling outside like thick smoke. Signaling the fire within. She wanted to run into the flames, burn.

Friday mid-evening. She strode in, Queen if that's what they needed her to be. She was looking for her Knight. Wanted him to kneel before her, lift her knuckles to his lips, and then still on his knees she needed him to bury his face in the juncture of her thighs.

She exhaled, eyes settling on the first familiar men. Tig and Juice at the bar. She knew better than to swivel her head looking for him. She slid herself onto the bar stool, taking both of them by surprise.

She smiled, wondering if her grin was reminiscent of the corpse's rictus, but after their initial pause, they both smiled back at her, all tooth and male laughter. And she relaxed, it was going to be alright. Tig offered her a shot of whatever they were downing and she nodded, still wanting to see him. She turned slightly, and there he was at a far table, a crow eater leaning into him, but his eyes were on her, glittering through the dim light, his face set in exasperated defeat. She smiled at him and he shook his head at her, then stood and walked away from the woman without a word, sauntering toward her, his purpose far more obvious than her attempt had been. He moved up beside her, seating himself sideways on the bar stool. She had to look away from him, the grey-streaked shock of hair falling into his eyes, the goatee, the scars. Everything about him had her insides writhing in need, painful junkie agony. And she hadn't even ridden the high yet.

"Where're the boys?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, I had them surgically removed." She threw back the shot, grimaced, and pushed the empty glass across the bar back to Tig's side. Juice barked out laughing.

Chibs frowned. "That's funny. I guess."

"Surgically removed." Juice was still laughing.

"Simmer down," Chibs told him.

She wasn't finished. "Everyone always wants to know where the boys are, like if they aren't with me then maybe I drowned them in the bathtub?"

Chibs shook his head at her.

She had the good graces to blush and look away. She lifted one of her thin shoulders, leaning towards him slightly, apologizing. "Gemma has them for the night. The weekend maybe. I haven't decided yet." With two fingers she indicated to Tig the empty shot glass. Then she turned and looked at Chibs. "I'm more than just their mother, Filip. They aren't attached to me at the hip."

"Aye?"

She glared at him and Tig pulled another shot glass out from behind the bar and topped a line of glasses off.

They each picked up a glass and toasted, to the dead. Slamming the empty glasses back down in a staccato rush. Another messy line of blended whiskey was drawn across the tops again.

"To?" Chibs asked this time, raising his shot glass, looking at her.

"Grandmothers!" Juice said and Tara laughed.

"Are grandmothers milfs?" Tig asked. "Cuz tonight," he leered across the bar at Tara, "I'm drinking to milfs."

Chibs shook his head disapprovingly at him. "That what you're doing?"

"Jesus, Chibsie, pull the stick out," Tig reached across the bar and grabbed Chibs on his far shoulder and shook him into Tara.

She grabbed at his forearms, squeezing tight, rejoicing in the opportunity to touch him, absorb the heat of him through her palms. Chibs brought the side of his head down deliberately against hers, she closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him. She let go of his arms as he pushed himself away from her.

"So, tell me I was stupid to think Jax would be here," she said to no one. And no one responded.

Tig had pulled several pints of beer and placed them on the bar top. Juice held up a hand and pushed his shot glass back across the bar. Tig topped it off with the whiskey and then Juice expertly dropped the shot glass into the mug of beer. He began gulping deeply.

"Impressive," Tara said, smiling at him. He blushed and finished the boilermaker.

She turned on the bar stool, slender elbows on the counter behind her, leaning back, legs crossed prettily. Chibs handed her a pint glass and she smiled at him and he looked away, brows furrowed. She sipped at her beer, watching the crow eaters and club members over the rim. The lights had been dimmed, the room filling with legal and illegal smoke. A small group of women were clustered around the jukebox, pressing buttons, nodding to one another, smoking.

She nodded in the direction of the woman who was watching him, waiting for his return. "Don't stay here on my account. You can go back to your table," she said softly.

He leaned toward her, a small movement but it set her heart trilling. "Don't tell me what to do, luv."

She smiled, shaking her head. "You don't scare me, Filip."

"I should." He drained the glass in one long gulp.

She watched his throat move, the chest hair peeking over the edge of his t-shirt collar, the worn leather seated like chain mail across his shoulders. She held her breath.

They had moved to a table, just the two of them. Members and crow eaters giving them a respectable berth. For hours they talked, drank, she made him gossip about all the bikers and women in the clubhouse. And delightfully, he pacified her with well-told stories and amusing observations. She was drawn to everything about him.

She was leaning against him, hard. Against her arm she felt him strengthen himself, supporting her. She slipped her hand beneath the table and onto the inside of his thigh. She watched him slit his eyes nearly closed at this, the lovely fold of his eyelids.

Sometimes his face, in certain reposes, looked exactly as he must have looked as a young boy. She could see him with the years stripped away. It pinched something inside of her. She felt the rise of his chest as he inhaled deeply. He turned his head slightly towards her, one eyebrow raised in question. She followed the inseam with the edges of her fingernails, keeping her gaze fast and hard and hot on his. He rolled his lips between his teeth, reaching for his pack of smokes, feeding a cigarette between his lips.

She sat back in her chair, looking at him, guilty hands returned to her lap.

"You're incredibly beautiful," she told him, taking the lit cigarette from his fingers.

He nodded, letting her. "And you're incredibly drunk."

She laughed. "Maybe, yes. But you're still incredibly beautiful." She was overwhelmed by him. The foreboding exterior and the inviting interior. It was a delicious dichotomy that made him both locked but accessible to someone who held the secret key.

"Only you and me mum would ever say so."

"No. What about Lucy or Lacey or whatever her name is over there."

He sneered, not looking in the direction of the crow eater Tara was indicating with a tilt of her head. He waited for her to pass the smoke back to him. "Doubt she could even pick me out of a lineup of probable suspects."

Tara tried to push the image of him entangled with that woman out of her mind but it wouldn't go, his hands on her body, his mouth on her lips, waking up with her beside him. No, no, she thought to herself. She's so beneath you. I would offer you everything I have. You could have everything I could possibly give you if you would just take it from me. She reached up a hand to his face and briefly ghosted the scar on his left cheek with hot fingertips. At the corner of his mouth she pressed the tip of her thumb between his lips. They looked at one another for a long moment before she dropped her hand to the table.

"That's probably not a good idea, doll."

"Probably not." She finished the beer, sucking at the foam. She pouted into the empty glass. "Something about you seems to," she raised her shoulders at him, "fill me up with bad ideas."

"Aye?" He laughed at this, the sound a tacit encouragement.

She nodded, smiling, teasing. "Do you want me to tell them to you?"

He licked at his lower lip, studying her thoughtfully. "Not here I don't."

"Then let's get out of here."

He laughed again, low and quiet. "That, my darling girl, is definitely not a good idea. But we will take you home and see you get safely put to bed behind a locked door."

"Define safe," she said. "And is that the royal 'we'?"

"The only royalty here is you."

She looked away, drumming her fingers on the table. He had meant to put her in her place.

And then Tig was staggering into the backs of the two of them, dragging an empty chair over, seating himself between them. He slung an arm around Tara's shoulders, pulling her up hard against his chest. "Girl, you never party with us. Like never ever." She placed a flat hand on him, trying to push away. He pulled her tighter. "You're stuck up, huh?"

"I'm not stuck up." She was offended. "What do I have to be stuck up about?"

Tig popped his eyes at her. Then he reached over and drained Chibs' beer. "Too good for us?"

"No. It's not like that at all. I've been kind of busy. Being a mom." She hesitated. "My hand."

"And now Jax is out of town and here you are. How's that work?" Tig looked from her to Chibs and back again.

"Tiggy," Chibs growled through clenched teeth.

Tara's voice had a biting edge. "You're not, actually, you know, listening to me. Is there something else you want to say?"

He locked his blue gaze onto hers. "I'm just curious. You know."

"I hear that curiosity can kill a cat." She looked from him to the table of empties, then up to Chibs. "We're dry here."

Tig laughed, throwing his head back and finally releasing her. She settled into her chair, watching him.

"I got nine lives, baby. Believe me. And you want to keep partying? I'll go get something that will really put hair on your chest."

"No. I think I might be done. I mean, I am done. I'm going to go find the bathroom." She stood, surprised at the stumble in her first step. She was drunker than she had realized while sitting down. She settled her hips and walked away from the table, headed towards the back bathroom.

When she came out of the disturbingly dirty bathroom, Chibs was leaning against the far wall of the hallway, arms crossed over his chest. He straightened. "You're going home. Now. Tig is not someone you should be messing with that way."

Hot anger flared inside of her. "I'm not messing with him. What the hell does that mean, Filip?"

He scowled, running both hands over his head, palming his hair flat. "Aye, you're not. But believe me; you've got temptation written all over you like a bad tattoo. We can talk about it tomorrow. I'm taking you home. Where are your keys?"

"In the car."

"After you."

She could sense him behind her as she moved back into the main room of the clubhouse, the smoke thicker now, the lights strafing through the white and grey tendrils. Bodies were moving in shadowed corners, dancing on a makeshift dance floor, on top of the pool table. Loud laughter and a simmering sound close to the floor full of seductive allure. Tig and Juice were at the bar, two crow eaters seated between them and neither looked over as she slipped out the open door, into the night air. She knew they had been told to ignore her presence.

Even the parking lot seemed to be shimmering with illicitness. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Then she stretched out both her arms and spun in a wide circle. She wanted to be dizzy, she wanted to fall to her knees, and she wanted someone to put their hands on her body.

Chibs was having none of it. He grabbed her around her upper arm, tight enough to almost hurt, and kept her moving towards the SUV. At the passenger door, he pulled it open and pressed her forward, into the car. She tried to say something but even to her own ears she knew it was ridiculousness. He nodded at her, indulgently patient, a smile betraying the corners of his lips. Then he reached down and lifted her foot into the car and, stepping back, shut the door.

Inside the car, it was dark and she closed her eyes. It smelled fresh, like her perfume, clean babies, animal crackers. She screwed her eyes shut tighter and told herself she was not going to cry. Drunken weeping was the worst. She pulled huge lungfuls of air into her body and then Chibs was there beside her. He was turning to her, she marveled at how tuned in he seemed to be to her channel. He had a finger under her chin, pulling her face around towards him.

"Wha' is it?"

"Nothing," she whispered between teeth clenched tight.

He stroked her cheek with the ball of his thumb. She looked at him from beneath her thick black lashes. She leaned her face into his hand, felt at the warmth of his palm, the strength in his fingers. Slowly he dropped his hand away.

He nodded at her, reached under the floor mat for the keys and started the car.

Out on the road, she lowered the window, her head on the sill. The air on her face. He did the same on his side.

"Fucken cages," he laughed.

She turned to him, the wind whipping into the car. "I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for, luv?"

She bit her lip and lay her head back down on the window sill.

"You got nuthin' to apologize for, Tara."

"I'm so lonely, Filip."

"I know. I know you are."

"It's the kind of loneliness that's making me act badly. I'm too young to feel so old."

He shook his head but said nothing.

Inside the house, she dead bolted the front door as he stood in the foyer watching her. She grinned at him, then took him by the hand and led him down the hallway and into her bedroom.

In the doorway, the bed looming large in the light of a nightlight, he shook his hand loose. "You get yourself situated. I'm gonna use the loo."

"The loo?" she laughed.

He smiled and walked down the hallway, pointedly avoiding the master bathroom.

She stripped down to her bra and panties, strewing her clothes on the floor and burrowed under the bedding. She kept her eyes on the doorway and then he was there.

"Alright, good girl, sleep now."

"No. Please don't leave. Please. Fil."

"I'll be on the couch, how's that?"

"Stay here please." She sat up and patted the empty space beside her. "I'm so tired of sleeping alone."

He walked slowly back into the room. "Tara, I cannae do that. Don't ask me to."

"You don't have to get under the covers."

She watched him consider, weighing all the options and their resultant consequences. Finally he shrugged out of the cut, pulled his hoodie off over his head, laying both on a chair. Then he bent and unlaced his heavy boots. He sat on the edge of the bed and toed them off. Slowly he lowered himself onto his back and she looked down at him, the nightlight in the hallway, but he was in deep dark shadows.

She lay down and lifted her arm up out of the bedding. He took her hand in his and pulled it down to his chest. She realized that if he was here, then he knew full well where Jax was. If he was lying beside her in her bed, he knew what hours Jax would keep. She squeezed her eyes shut, she would not cry. Not for Jax.

Breathing in the scent of this man and his leather she slipped into sleep.

She woke to the smell of coffee. She could trace his body map imprinted in the duvet cover and she pressed her face there and inhaled the unique spiced scent of him. She pulled on sweat pants and a tank top and found him in the kitchen. He was leaning against the counter, coffee mug in hand, deep in thought and he looked up at her when she came in, nodding good morning.

His hair finger-combed. She felt her heart rise up to him. Felt her chest swell with warmth and affection and more than anything, gratitude. He was her friend. Probably her only friend on earth at the moment. She took the coffee cup from him and set it on the countertop. He looked at her, wary.

"Stop being so scared of me," she told him and then pulled herself into his arms.

With a reluctant slowness he wrapped her in his embrace and she pressed her body tight against his, going up on tiptoe. As the moments passed, he held her faster, fiercer, wide open hands on her back. She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She was going to have this moment.

"It's not you I'm scared of, luv," he said. "It's my own treacherous heart."

She squeezed him tight and stepped back. He reached for the other cup and filled it for her. She got the cream out of the refrigerator, topped it off, and then they both sat at the kitchen table.

"What are we doing here, Tara?" he asked her. His eyes warm but serious.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I just don't." Then she smiled. "But you're still beautiful and I'm not drunk anymore."

He laughed.

"Thank you for staying with me last night."

"You shouldn't have come down to the clubhouse."

She nodded, looking out the window. "You're right. I see that. I needed to get out of here. I wanted to find you."

"You could have called me."

"Would you have come?"

He narrowed his eyes at her, shaking his head slowly, sipping at the coffee. "I don't know. Probably no."

She smiled sadly.

"Do you know, I mean really know, how badly this could end?"

It was wildly, inconceivably dangerous. A betrayal that would never be forgiven. Never could be forgotten. A treachery that would be avenged, without mercy.

But she simply could not help herself any longer. It had been a delicious torture leading up to the moment in which her mind finally allowed her body to lead itself. Into certain destruction.

Her back was against the bathroom door of the apartment in the clubhouse, he was pressing her there, holding her fast with the length of his body.

"I need…I need….I…." She couldn't breathe, hyperventilating. He had reduced her entirely. With his hands, his mouth, his tongue, and the male press of his body. But more than that, with how far he was willing to go with her, how completely he was committed to traveling the distance that this digression could take them both. It was his total dedication to her that had undone her.

He slowed their fall. He had both his hands on her face and he was kissing her. Biting at her lips, sucking her tongue into his mouth. A slow languid roll of his hips into hers, his hands growing warmer and warmer on her face. Sliding his hot palms down the long curve of her throat, fingers on the bending edge of her jaw. Holding her. He was holding her with his fingertips, with the solid press of his body.

Then the frantic abandon, the immediate need had become something else, something so much more. He wrestled control back for both of them, lifting his hands from her hip bones and taking her face between his palms. Deliberately kissing out of her mouth. He tasted of cigarettes, his tongue warm. The unfamiliar shape of it inside her mouth, licking at her, worshipping her teeth.

The shift in urgency had her squirming. He laughed against her flesh.

"Aye?" he asked her quiet, his voice low in his throat. She could hear the catch in it.

"Please," she whispered, mewling, begging. She was begging him.

He pulled their foreheads together. He rolled his against hers, then caught her earlobe between his teeth and whispered into her ear. "I know. Not here. Not here, doll."

Of course. She crashed hard and he seemed to have anticipated that, pulling her into an embrace as he stepped back and she slid forward into his arms. One hand on the back of her head, the other spanning her waist.

"Oh, my god."

He shushed her but she had become boneless in fear.

"What are we doing? What the hell are we doing?" She straightened herself and stepped back. He dropped his hands away. A huge gapping space between them.

"Let's get out of this room, first, aye? Then we can talk all you want. Or not." His voice was calm.

She was nodding, filled with adrenalin. She ran her fingertips along the bruising bow of her lips. He was watching her from lowered brows, breathing hard through his mouth, trying to regain his own cool, she guessed. He rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand.

"You go first and I'll follow in a while. I want to use the bathroom," she said. She had actually come into the apartment to use the cleaner bathroom in the clubhouse. Middle of the day, boys out in the play area. Unser swinging Abel, Thomas on his hip.

He was nodding. "Tara," he whispered. She was amazed at how his voice seemed to cut all of her fear away. He leaned in and kissed her. Again. And she thought to herself, this is what swooning is, this is what it is to need another human being past the point of reason, past the point of sense, this is the body demanding what it wants. She had never felt such urgency before, never felt that she was half of an elusive whole.

Then he was slipping quietly out the door, into the hallway, the door shutting behind him. Quickly now she moved into the bathroom. She had, of course, used this bathroom numerous times, returning to the bed where Jax would be smoking or reading something to do with motorcycles or Viking history, or just staring up at the ceiling with the weight of the crown heavy on his brow.

And where was her husband now? She truly had no idea. The estrangement between them, the stream that had always seemed to separate them but could at one time be easily forded, had swelled to an impassable dangerous river. To step even one foot off the bank and into the churning waters would be to guarantee drowning, sucked into the tangled depths, smashed against rocks and deadfall, sucked into the freezing waters until she would not be able to save herself.

After the funeral cars had left, the motorcycles banking in a seemingly endless line out of the cemetery, the hearse pulled back around to the graveyard garage and parked inside, he was still standing there. The forever morning having become the forever night, inside of him. His heart was as gaping wide and deep as the hole in which her body had been lain. The three gravediggers acknowledged him with nods before ignoring him, maneuvering the backhoe into place. One of them hit a switch on the device that lowered the casket and he had to close his eyes against the sight of it. Her grave was being filled. He made himself stand through the shaking of his bones. Made himself stand for the unimaginable hour it took to bury her.

Then he fell to his knees.

And he wept. For her and for himself. For their treacherous hearts, the displaced loyalties that had kept them one from the other.