Notes: This is the second of 6 one-shots that I've already posted to Ao3. Originally posted 09/23/2013.
I feel as if some of this may appear to be OOC; for Chibs at least, honestly, we don't really get enough of him in the show for me to portray him as accurately as I would like in accordance with what the show has done with him thus far. If there's any question as to why I started calling him Filip; that is his real name, and I also thought, with the dissolution of the club, a fresh start, and a new leader trying to get a solid foothold in the club and gang dynamics, he may try to update his image a little bit. I know some people might disagree with that, but, like I said, he isn't portrayed in depth often, and this story is my fucking sandbox, so, DEAL WITH IT.
JK, love and thank you guys giving this shit a shot.
P.S. The title is a song by Cold War Kids (listen, it's good); the quote at the very end is attributed to Khalil Gibran.
I.
"Everything I've done," he whispered pleadingly into her ear, "was for us." The pain in his voice was of the unimaginable sort; his words were strained under the weight of the handcuffs around his wrists. Tara would never be able to come to terms with all of the horrible things that Jax had done and then soundly conclude that it had all been for them. She knew that it had certainly started that way – with hopeful idealism that rang true in his earlier diary entries, pleading for the ways of his father. But it was naïve, she thought angrily, it was never going to be that way.
The moralities of club life were at times in direct opposition to those of civilian life, and Jax's mission to somehow find a balance between the two had been chaotic at best. At worst, it was some of the most violent, lonely, and depressing years of her life. How stupid they had been, to think that they could exist in such an unrealistic vacuum, and with little to no consequences at that.
"I love you, Tara. I'm sorry."
Thomas fidgeted and whimpered in her arms as she held him closer, trying to keep his eyes shielded from the distracting lights of the police cars outside.
"I know," she whispered against the softness of Thomas' hair, "I know."
…
The club was little more than a smoldering heap of burning flesh and broken bones. There was almost nothing left to suggest the gloriousness of their early years; when it was just a group of boys riding bikes, playing men. He could still recall those days with fondness, before Jax and Clay had gone to war, igniting an all consuming shit-storm that would linger in the corners of Teller-Morrow long after the ATF had given up their frantic searching. He was the only logical choice now, which seemed "a bit fucked up," if you were to ask, but if he didn't step up and accept the role left him, the Sons of Anarchy would disappear into the dusty annals of criminal history, taught by stiff-necked, aging, government-funded minions for years to come.
It was Filip Telford or no one, he would think bitterly, the aging biker, trippin' up in the dark.
He slammed the shot glass back down on the sticky bar.
"To Juice," he said tiredly, casting a solemn glance towards Tig.
"To Juice."
II.
In hindsight he would blame it on his unyielding stubbornness when it came to loyalties. Tara was Jax's Old Lady; the mother of his children, how could he not look out for her after all of that bullshit had come raining down on their heads? Wasn't the club wholly responsible for her troubles, and ultimately, the trouble that would one day follow Thomas and Abel?
"What happened to us," Tara pulled at the loose threads of her sweater, "I would never be so… selfish, as to blame it all on the club."
The late afternoon sky was a slate gray, dark and unforgiving. Rain was imminent, but Tara had been surprisingly calm about his visit, even going so far as to invite him to stay should the skies open and wash all of them of such a terrible few months (or rather, years).
"You mustn't blame yourself for it, it wasn't—"
"But it was," her voice rose, but she quickly quieted at the sight of Abel asleep on the couch, "I made my own decisions, Chibs. What was in my control, I did my best with."
She looked down at the table, at the mug resting between her hands, "I didn't always make the right choices, but they were mine," her eyes flicked up towards his own, "I wouldn't have anyone forget that; especially me."
He had ridden over to Tara's place thinking that maybe she needed someone to lean on, but in witnessing her moment of self-awareness and responsibility, he knew that if anyone was going to need a resting place, it was going to be him; exhausted and gasping against her admirably strong shoulders – never yielding to the weight of all of their many, many choices. He thought of his ex-wife, of Gemma, and now Tara, their roles as Protector being the one thing that bound them all together. Gemma and Tara were different people, they went about their roles in their own ways, but their goals were similar in nature. I will protect what is mine.
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance and Chibs smiled under the suffocating weight of their silence.
"I've gotta say, that's probably the smartest thing I've heard in a while."
She picked up both of their mugs to place them in the empty sink.
"Nah," the dishes clinked softly together, "just the truth."
The thunder sounded once more, obediently followed by a quick flash of lightening. The long-anticipated rain could be heard falling softly against the roof, and Tara leaned against the counter to get a better look at the sky.
"I guess you better get going if you want to beat this storm."
"That's okay," Tara couldn't help but smile herself as she heard him taking off his gloves, "I'll wait until it passes."
III.
Tara had been pretty damn sure that she would be the hell outta dodge by now. Oregon, Washington, she would have even been willing to settle for Northern California; just so long as she and her boys were no longer shackled to Charming. She was pretty surprised then, when she woke up one morning, two months after Jax's arrest, still sleeping in their bed.
The morning following his arrest, she had woken up early, before Abel or Thomas, and had sat down at the kitchen table, laptop open, searching for viable job opportunities, a decent, affordable place to live, with good schools and absolutely no shady garages or ties to gang activity of any kind. She had been enthusiastic in her search at first, but then Chibs, ("No, Filip," he corrected firmly), had shown up, drinking tea and having short, yet oddly intense discussions about the nature of fault. And then for some reason, unbeknownst to herself, she had gone to Teller-Morrow the next day to see if there was anything she could do to help.
She heard a dog bark next door and rolled over to keep from facing Jax's noticeably empty side of the bed. He had just seemed so defeated, Filip, usually so calm and determined to do right by the MC; but now so strangely lost in the empty seat following the disastrous reigns of Clay and his "sworn to do better" son. JT may have been Jax's biological father, but Clay had wormed his way inside of Jax's heart without him even having known it was happening.
Thinking of Jax and his well-meaning, yet ultimately failed attempts to improve the club and, in turn, their own lives, made Tara's chest clench in agony so she tried to stop thinking after that. The neighbor's dog barked a few more times, the clock chimed in the hallway, and the sound of a bike thrummed loudly from down the street.
…
Redwood was an empty charter. The table looked decidedly bigger with so few bodies occupying the surrounding chairs. There was only himself, Tig, Bobby, and Happy; Bobby had only come back temporarily, to try and help the club get back on its feet, and he had made a point of making them know it – emphatically, and more than once. Both of the prospects had left for other charters, Filip had given any Redwood members left standing the opportunity to branch out, one of them even opting to go Nomad for a turn.
"I know it's been a bit of a crazy time," he said confidently to the quiet men, "but I… we will get this charter back on its feet."
"Whatever feet it's got left," Tig said bitterly under his breath.
"I've given you all the time you needed," Filip responded sternly, "I understan' how rough it's been, but we need to keep it together, alright?"
He stared meaningfully into Tig's eyes.
"That means no bloody commentary, d'ya hear me?"
If there was ever a time to make his authority as President understood, it was now, when they were at their weakest. The room was maddeningly quiet, Tig had only nodded, still betraying a feeling of bitterness and doubt, but staying silent all the same. Happy gave a brief grin and the silence became less of a foreboding quiet and more of an unavoidable consequence of an empty room. The meeting continued without interruption, and even Bobby felt a sense of satisfaction at the banging of the gavel.
"You'll do good Chibs," Bobby confided after the others had left the room, "I know it's a hell of a lot of messes you're being forced to clean up, but I think you're gonna do it just fine."
The sound of Thomas and Abel laughing from inside the bar made the weight of his new-found responsibilities unclench from around his lungs, and he clapped him politely on the back, "Thanks Bobby," he took a deep breath, "I hope you're right."
IV.
It wasn't long before the various "competition" started thinking that the Sons of Anarchy was peaked for a take-over; or at the very least a complete expulsion from the criminal landscape. Filip had expressed a very firm wish to lay low for as long as possible, while reaching out to their friends for help, finding less dangerous means of making money, and gently extricating their presence from the shady deals that had been made by either Clay or Jax in the last few years. Near the end of this particular inventory he was having a hard time recalling who had struck up which obviously unwise deal with whichever comically villainous mob or gang leader.
In Filip's mind, the only real way to start healing the club was to ride; for fairly long stretches, in most any kind of weather, to (mostly) benign destinations. And it was on a particularly beautiful day, on an empty stretch of promising road, that the first "competitors" decided to make a play for the top-spot. It was to be one of many, over the course of a few months until the club would eventually find the feet that they had so longingly fought to stand on.
No one, thankfully, had been killed, but Tig had taken a shot in the shoulder and Filip had wiped out pretty hard on his bike, although amazingly the bike took the brunt of the damage. Tara was in her car and out the door before she could think long and hard about what she was doing. Rushing to the garage to take care of the men she was supposed to have left behind? Bigger and brighter things? Any of this ringing a bell?
From the outside the garage was quiet, and despite the hiding of the sun beneath the clouds she could still feel the heat rising off the asphalt. She tried to push away the familiar feeling rising in her gut and clutched the strap of her medical bag a little bit tighter.
"What are you doing, Tara," she whispered.
It was fairly quiet inside the bar as well, and she sighed in relief. She had been expecting a large group of bikers and women, maybe a few children running in between the tables. Happy was fixing Tig a shot behind the bar, while Filip stood angrily at a distance, arms crossed. His shoulders dropped a little when she walked in, but he was still boxed inside invisible walls of his own making. She opened her mouth as if to speak to him, but Tig gave a grunt of pain and she rushed over to have a look.
Her hands had trembled only slightly, and even though it was a long way away from mending the hearts of day old babies, it was still a step in the right direction, and her heart filled with gratitude. Tig had hugged her close, and while earlier on in her days as an Old Lady she had been put off by Tig and his eccentric personality, his thinly veiled sexual perversions, she could feel the innocent sense of gratefulness in his touch, and in his lingering presence the feeling that this was a man mourning his old life; the life where he had a daughter, and a club he could call family.
"It's no problem," she said honestly, pulling away, "Just try not to get shot again."
He laughed, "I always do."
…
The reaper at the center of the table was laughing at him. His grim, wooden smile revealed what the others were too cowardly to mention. That he had failed, that they were no better off than they'd been a few months earlier; that Death had not seen fit to grant them peace just yet.
He slammed his gloved fists against the hard wood of the table as Tara was closing the doors behind her. There was a time when she might have jumped at the sound, raised her hands to her heart in surprise or fear; but now there was only a calm acknowledgement, a quick assessment of the situation at hand – and Filip's guilt came as no surprise to her.
"Remember when we talked about choices?"
He ran his hands through his hair but they still fell across his forehead, and he sat gloomily down in the VP chair, feeling much like a petulant child, but he couldn't seem to help it.
"You've done nothing but think of the big picture since you grabbed that gavel," she said quietly, "I know that you tried to tell me that what happened to me and the boys, Jax; that it wasn't my fault."
She sat down at the head of the table, seemingly without a thought, and he felt a change in the room. For a brief moment he felt himself transported back to a fog-laden hill in Scotland, covered in rocks and brambles, the moaning of the wind – the stories he heard when he was a boy; the changing of the wind, and the dawning of a new age after the reign of a greedy King.
"And you were wrong then," she placed her hand over his closed fist, "but you wouldn't be now. What happened today was not your fault. It was going to happen, no matter what you did."
"Filip," he unclenched his fingers slowly beneath her own, "it's the nature of this life; this life that you've chosen," and quietly, "that I chose."
He flipped his hand to grip her fingers and the leather of his gloves squeaked softly, "You didn't choose everything."
"No," she placed her other hand over his, "I didn't."
V.
Jax Teller was in prison, but that didn't make his enemies any less becalmed. It wasn't his incarceration that they wanted; it was the skinning of his life. And before anyone in prison could snuff him out like the flame of a candle, they were going to chip away at his heart first: his love, his children, his club. Redwood could wait – the heart couldn't.
Tara kept a gun in the drawer of her nightstand – one that Gemma had given to her, scratched serial number and all. And while they had had their share of disagreements (a polite term, certainly), and true enough, they hadn't spoken much since the arrest, she still took comfort in Gemma's efforts to love her, to care about what Jax cared about, and the love that she had for her grandchildren. It wasn't just the gun itself that made her feel safe, it was what it represented. So when the hulking men in the black ski masks broke into her house, and the alarm was blaring, and she could hear her babies screaming, crying for their father, she didn't hesitate.
And she was a good shot.
…
The guys were there before the cops. The blood was soaking into her carpet and she looked Filip dead in the eyes and said, "I'm calling the police. No one's wrapping those assholes in any of my God damn sheets."
After the cops had left, after Tig, Happy, and Bobby had all hugged and kissed Tara, the still whimpering boys, Filip volunteered to hang back and make sure everything was alright.
"I should move," her voice was scratchy and she cleared her throat, "this house is a death trap."
He laughed but he could see the determination in her eyes and knew that it was less of a joke and more of a serious consideration.
"Where would you go?"
She sighed, cradling her face in her hands, and looked into his face thoughtfully.
"I'm not sure," she blinked slowly, "what do you think?"
He took a moment before answering to think. He made a conscience effort these days to do that; to really stop, to weigh the pros, cons, and the consequences of his actions. He came to the conclusion that he had been remarkably unselfish these past few months – more so than usual. He thought about the two months that Tara had stayed in Charming longer than she planned; of rainstorms, biking accidents, shaking hands, Scottish folklore, and thought fleetingly about being just a wee bit selfish.
She had stood up and moved towards the cabinets to get a glass of water while he'd been thinking, and when his thoughts had finally culminated in this frightening decision that would probably change all of their lives forever, he looked up in surprise, never even having heard her move.
"I think…"
She stopped what she was doing and turned away from the fridge, facing his determined expression.
"What?" she asked curiously, waiting for him to finish.
He got up from the table and moved towards her before she could blink, his hands cupping her chin and grasping at the base of her neck, she could smell the leather of his gloves. He was kissing her and she felt powerless, caught up in their conversations and brief touches; her previous thirst was no longer a craving for water, it was for him, all wrecked and overwhelmed in the remnants of an old kingdom. She dropped her empty glass in surprise only a few seconds later, and their brief moment was shattered with the sound of its impact against the tiled floor.
"I think you should stay," he whispered roughly against her mouth, his words nearly lost in the sudden thickness of his accent.
She found herself smiling, "Do you mean in this house, or…?"
He laughed and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, "We'll find you a new one," her eyes opened and she stared bravely back into his, "this house is a bloody death trap."
VI.
Tara would always keep Jax's leather jacket hanging in the back of her closet. She would stand fast in this stipulation, always. Despite the disastrous end to their relationship, he would always be her first love, the man who had given her two beautiful boys; his intentions had been pure, his dreams for her and their children, large and magnificent, and she would always be grateful for Jackson Teller.
She swore to herself, when Thomas and Abel were older, she would take it out from behind all of her various dresses, sweaters, jackets; and she would tell them everything.
"No secrets," she would whisper against Filip's chest in the dark of their room late at night.
"No," he would answer, and there would never be a minute in her life when she could sense a lie behind his eyes or in the touch of his fingers against her skin.
"No secrets."
…
It had been a little strange at first, and he would have been surprised, if not a little suspicious, if it weren't. Not necessarily so strange for the two of them, but to the rest of the club, to the guys and Old Ladies in other charters who would have had to have been blind, deaf, and dumb to not know about Jax Teller and Tara Knowles; but they got over it quickly. The new President of Redwood didn't take kindly to idle gossip, and neither did Tara ("I'm not an 'Old Lady,' she said laughingly with a wink, "I'm a young, hot, talented surgeon.")
Some of the women from other charters, even those in their employ, gave her the odd look sometimes – but she'd given up the pettiness and jealousies, now all they got was a stony stare or a dismissive blink. She was above the childish manipulations and competitiveness of the earlier days. Even if she was concerned about Filip's faithfulness, she didn't need him; she had herself, she had her quickly growing children who appeared to have good heads on their shoulders, and she was thankful everyday for it.
She wasn't always involved in club matters, but their came a point a year or so after they'd had their first kiss in her haunted kitchen, that he'd gotten a new chair made, and it sat commandingly in the corner of the room, whether empty or not; a seat from which she could glance up from a book, or a case file, from which she could watch and listen.
There would always be a shadow over the Redwood charter, cast by the Tellers, and maybe even by Gemma, who while still a quiet presence at the garage, had significantly diminished in club activity in the year or so following Jax's death in prison.
Filip 'Chibs' Telford would never be so arrogant as to call himself an admirable, successful leader, all the qualities that made for legends; but he would consider himself acceptable. Tara heard the others speak highly of him and knew he was only being modest, but she thought that in this business, they could all use a little modesty.
And every once in a while, in an aside between other members, in his own moments of silence, he would glance back towards Tara's startlingly loud presence in this room of Men and admire the stern beauty of her face, her seemingly calm indifference, yet an awareness that she was hanging on every word, and think of those she had written in the back of a small, blank notebook she'd given to him months earlier; after she had really decided to accept this life and make it her own: "No turning back," she'd confided, seated again at the head of the reaper-carved table, "only going forward."
'Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.'