AN:
Thanks for all the great feedback on the Prologue! You guys are so great! However, I won't be picking up that thread until the Epilogue because we do need to find out what happens to Jax and Thomas (and Gemma). But hopefully I can make the journey interesting for you.
Since this is new story territory, I'm going to write shorter chapters in an effort to update more frequently - don't want anyone to get lost (which always happens to me when I wait too long to read an update).
Chapter 1: FIND YOUR OWN TRUTH
"That was Rosen, Teller's attorney. They'll be here tomorrow morning at nine." Patterson hangs up the phone and fixes her gaze on the blond man sitting in one of her visitors' chairs - Nick Reese, the state's Chief Deputy Attorney General and her new partner in prosecuting Charming's most shocking double murder case in decades.
"Good." He nods approvingly. "I think you should question him - he'll talk to you; Althea and I will watch from behind the interview glass."
"Althea?" Patterson wrinkles her brow questioningly. Who else was the AG going to assign to babysit her on this case?
"Lieutenant Althea Jarry." Reese hands her a file. "The new head of the San Joaquin Sheriff's Department, Charming-Morada Sub-Station. Eli Roosevelt's replacement and the lead investigator on this case, effective immediately."
The first time Jax remembers ever feeling this gut-wrenching pain that wracked his whole body, he was eight years old and it'd been completely his fault. His second grade class had gone on a field trip to Mercer Caverns and - although he'd been stoked to spend a school day out of school - walking around a cold, dark cave wasn't exactly his idea of a good time. Bored out of his mind (as their teacher had separated him and Opie to prevent the two of them from getting into trouble together) and inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark (which his dad had just taken him, Opie and Tara to see at the dollar theatre), he'd used the lure of finding the bones of prehistoric animals or people to convince Tara, his field trip "buddy," to slip away from the group and explore on their own. He knew her drive to learn and shared fondness for Indiana Jones ran deeper than her regard for the rules. Unfortunately, their future as explorers got cut short when - ignoring Tara's warning to walk slowly near the edge - he slipped on a rock and tumbled hell knows how many feet down to the wide, rocky ledge below.
It feels like his whole body's on fire; he can't move, can't even breathe without every inch of him screaming in pain. Lying on the cold cave floor, Jax assures himself that he's still alive - otherwise he wouldn't be hurting like hell, and his ears wouldn't be ringing like a freakin' fire alarm. It's the sound of hysterical sobbing that finally penetrates the roaring in his head and forces him to open his eyes.
"Wake up, Jax. Please wake up. Please, Jax. Please…" In the dim light he can see Tara on her knees beside him, swiping at the tears pouring down her face. Somehow she must've managed to scale down the steep and slick cave hill, foregoing safety in her panic to make sure he'd survived the fall.
"I'm…okay," he wheezes, patting her leg reassuringly, then winces from the stabbing pain that shoots through his ribs. But his efforts produce the desired effect as she stops crying and clasps his hand, which - to his surprise - doesn't hurt at all.
"Are you sure?" Worried green eyes scan him from head to toe. "You fell a long way and landed pretty hard."
Gritting his teeth, he tests different parts of his body with small movements to check what's still working. It stings like hell, but to his relief, most of him seems to be fine - except his left arm and shoulder, which he can't seem to move, and the constant, biting ache in his side.
"Do you think you can climb up the hill?" Assessing the difficult climb, she looks at him doubtfully. "Or if you're okay, I can go for help."
"No!" He tightens his grip on her hand. Letting her go for help might be the smart thing to do, but he can't bear the idea of lying in the dark all alone. "Don't leave me…please, Tara." Crap, he's going to cry; he can feel his eyes start to sting and furiously blinks the tears away so she won't think he's a baby.
Tara nods then flashes him a small smile that sends a comforting warmth coursing through him despite the coldness of the cave. "Okay." Stretching out beside him, she gives his hand a squeeze.
He doesn't know how long they lie there on the cold cave floor waiting to be rescued; it's weird, but somehow he's not freaked out about being lost and possibly injured - he still hurts all over, but now the pain's doesn't feel as bad as before. At first they try yelling at the top of their lungs for someone to find them - which doesn't last long because his chest starts to ache, and she realizes that they'll probably lose their voices if they continue. She reasons that since the cave walls echo, all they have to do is keep talking and their voices will carry - hopefully loudly enough for someone to overhear. It's a good plan, except all this talking makes his side ache even more.
So she tells him about the book she just finished reading - the adventures of a poor farm boy who saved his money to buy two dogs and how the three of them became a champion raccoon hunting team. At first he wonders why the hell Tara would ever read a book about hunting raccoons, but then listening to her, he becomes engrossed in the story about bravery and loyalty, love and family. Listening intently to every detail, he begs her to tell him how it ends because there's no way he'd be able to wait long enough to read it himself. As she continues, the tears he'd fought earlier come back with a vengeance; his mom taught him about death a while ago - it's sad enough to make him cry, even though he can't imagine loving anyone so much that he'd rather die than live without them.
"They say that red ferns aren't real," Tara tells him. "The book says there's an Indian legend about a little boy and girl who get lost in a blizzard and freeze to death; when their bodies are found, there's a big, beautiful red fern that's grown between them. According to the legend, only an angel can plant the seeds of a red fern - because where it grows, it'll never die because that place will always be sacred."
Jax stares at her and swallows hard. "Is that what you think will happen to us? That no one's going to find us until after we freeze to death in here?" He feels sick inside at the thought of never seeing his family or Opie again.
"Nope." She reaches over to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes, which he finds oddly soothing (he usually hates it when people mess with his hair). "The whole class is probably looking for us now - and I'm sure your mom and dad and all their friends will be here to look for you, too. Don't be scared, Jax." He wants to argue that he's not scared, that he's too tough to be scared, but the words just won't come out; instead, he inches closer to her, relaxing as she squeezes his hand again and smiles at him. "Whatever happens, I'm right here."
"Whatever happens, I'm right here."
Ever since they were kids, Tara would say that to him any time she'd sense his anxiety. But the day they got lost in the cave - when he'd broken his ribs and left shoulder, when she'd curled up next to him on that cold cave floor and held his hand for hours - was the first time. There's nothing in the whole goddamn universe that he wouldn't give to hear her say it now…
Waking up alone in their bed, he feels like complete shit; his head's throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch, no doubt caused by the empty bottles of Jack and Jameson tossed on the floor. It's like right after Tara left him to go to college - when he'd get up up feeling like fucking death every morning for three years; hell, ever since the first time she invited his fifteen-year-old self to spend the night in her bed, he's never been able to sleep soundly without her next to him. And last night…the crushing realization that he'd never again feel her curled up next to him had smacked like an iron fist, over and over. More than once throughout the night, he'd thought about reaching for his gun instead of the bottles of whiskey. It was just the thought of their sons and the promise he'd made to Tara to take care of them that kept him from giving into his grief-fueled insanity.
"Jax!" Oh fucking hell. The sound of a slamming door and his mother's irate voice breaks through the pounding in his skull. Eyeing the clock on the nightstand, he realizes he only has a few minutes before Rosen's supposed to pick him up for the meet with Patterson. He really can't deal with Gemma's shit right now. Despite his body's aching protest, he pulls himself out of bed; good thing he'd passed out fully dressed.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Gemma bursts into the room, her eyes wild with both anger and concern. "Your doctor never cleared you to leave."
"Morning to you, too, Mom." Squeezing her arm, he brushes past her to head for the bathroom. No time for a shower, which is just as well - he doesn't give a flying fuck about what Patterson thinks of his appearance. But maybe brushing his teeth will get the taste of shit out of his mouth.
She picks up one of the empty bottles from the floor before following him to the bathroom. Standing in the doorway, she glares at him, waving the empty bottle in his face. "Jesus Christ, Jackson - you just had a fucking heart attack that put you in a goddamn coma. What the hell are you trying…"
Ignoring her tirade, he spits out the toothpaste and splashes cold water on his face. "Where are the boys?"
The mention of her grandsons diffuses her temper somewhat. "Since I was under the impression that you were still flat on your back in the hospital, I checked Abel and Thomas into daycare before I came to see you. When your doctor told me that you took off, I left them there while I hunted down my idiot son."
He says nothing for a long moment, wiping his face with the towel. "How are they?" He'd asked about them before, but so caught up in his own pain, he didn't really listen to her response. Just that she had to tell them that their mommy was in heaven and not coming home again.
Gemma swallows hard as if trying to fight her own emotions. "They miss their mother," she replies simply. "And their father."
Jax grips the towel, not sure what to say; he's certainly no fucking rock of emotional strength right now. But fortunately, Rosen's sudden appearance saves him from having to come up with some bullshit response.
"The door was open…" The impeccably dressed attorney stops short as he assesses the tense scene in front of him: his disheveled client, who probably still reeks of trying to drown himself in whiskey, and his client's wild-eyed mother brandishing an empty Jack Daniels bottle. "Am I interrupting something?"
Shaking his head, Jax tosses the towel to the counter. "I'm ready." Turning to his mother, he pecks her on the cheek. "We're going over to talk to the DA. Leave the boys in day care. I'll pick them up this afternoon."
She scrambles after him as he starts to follow Rosen out the front door, grabbing his arm before he walks outside. "But Jax… You can't stay here. You can't let them stay here. Not after…"
Gently extricating himself from her grasp, he gives her shoulder another squeeze. "I appreciate everything you've done to take care of them, Mom. But I need to take it from here. That's what Tara would've wanted."
In the journals he'd started writing for his sons, he once told them how hard it was for him not to hate; how he's seen the destruction caused by those who've let their hate change them into the things they've sworn they'd never be. There was a time in his life when he didn't hate his adversaries; they were just obstacles to be used and/or dispatched as he did SAMCRO's business. But after the brutal chain of events leading to Tara's crushed hand and Opie's death, it'd become impossible not to give into the violent hate that burned inside of him - for Clay, for Pope and all the fuckers responsible for killing Opie, for Galen, for Wendy, for Toric…the fucking list kept growing.
Sitting in the DA's conference room, Jax glares at Patterson as the violent darkness surges inside him once again. He'd understood that she had a job to do in getting justice for four young victims of the school shooting, respected that she had the balls to confront him at Scoops on that fateful day - reminding him of his priorities as a husband and father. But what he can't forget or forgive - not in a million fucking years - was how she'd manipulated Tara's fear and desperation to further her own ends.
And now, even after hearing Jax recount the worst day of life - of his whereabouts after leaving the motel, of the blow-by-blow account of what he'd thought and what he'd done after coming home to the horror in his kitchen - she's refusing to disclose any leads or evidence they have about the case, spouting some fucked-up bullshit about him being a Person of Interest in the murders; that his alibi was useless because the SAMCRO President could order a hit as easily as he could order a pizza. It takes every fucking ounce of his goddamn self-control not to lunge across the table and choke the life out of the sanctimonious bitch.
As if sensing Jax's increasingly dangerous agitation, Rosen shoots him a quelling look - a silent reminder of what they'd discussed on the ride here. The lawyer warned that the DA would try to rile Jax into saying something that could hurt them, that even the most innocuous comment could be twisted into something that could land him in jail. Jax had scoffed, noting his long history with law enforcement assholes who'd tried and failed to get the better of him - only to be subdued into silence when Rosen quietly reminded him that none of those instances dealt with Tara's murder. "She'll use your rage and your grief and spin that into guilt - guilt that could be convincingly played back to a grand jury. All she needs is an indictment, and that'll land you back in jail because of the parole violation."
He manages to maintain a grim control over his temper for the rest of the meeting, responding to Patterson's questions with curt one-word answers, seething silently as she continues to side-step all of Rosen's questions about the investigation.
"I have to insist that you tell us the status of Tara's autopsy." Despite Patterson's refusal to divulge even the smallest of details regarding the case, Rosen seems unfazed in his determination to glean as much information as possible. "It's been a week; surely the medical examiner's office isn't that busy. My client would like to bury his wife."
Jax clenches his fists, once again fighting against the emotions that threaten to crush him; until this moment, he'd refused to talk or even think about burial arrangements for Tara - doing so seemed so brutally final. He can't fucking bear the idea of putting her into the ground.
"You know that autopsy reports usually take about six to eight weeks," Patterson replies. "However, due to the complexity of this case, it could take as long as 90 days before we can get final cause of death." She focuses her assessing gaze on Jax. "But the ME is finished with his exam. Your wife's body will be released to you within 48 hours."
"What the fuck was the point of that little dance?" Jax rages as the elevator doors close; Christ, he hates lawyers - present company excepted, for now.
Rosen shrugs. "It's clear that she's got nothing to pin the murders on you. Hell, I'm pretty sure she doesn't suspect you at all. You could've killed Tara when you found her in the park; instead you secured her freedom by agreeing to a deal that would've had you serving a couple of decades in prison. Patterson's many things, stupid isn't one of them."
Exiting the elevator, they spot a trio of SAMCRO members hovering near the building entrance. Rosen grabs Jax's arm before he can join them. "Everyone in this county knows you've been crazy in love with Tara since you guys were kids. I think Patterson's afraid of the bloodbath that's sure to come when you set SAMCRO on the course for retaliation. Maybe she believes locking you up is the only way to stop you from becoming California's most prolific serial killer…Jax, you need to be smart about this. Think about your kids."
Running his hand through his hair, Jax exhales loudly; the pounding in his head's returned with a vengeance. "Thanks. I'll be in touch."
"Yeah, call me later today. I need you to come to my office sometime in the next couple of days, we have some things to talk about."
Jax wrinkles his brow in confusion; fucking hell, he's got no more patience for this legal shit. He needs to spend time with his boys, plan their escape from this fucking town. "I thought you said she's got nothing on me."
"It's not about Patterson." Now it's Rosen's turn to exhale loudly. "Ally called me yesterday. She's got Tara's will."