Aikea-Guinea

It didn't take long for a biker to become familiar and comfortable with the streets he traveled, memorizing their every turn, dip, and nuance. Jax had heard it said that this was because man and machine became one with the road, but that was just pussy, poetic nonsense. The actual explanation was that motorcyclists needed to be more aware of their surroundings. In certain situations, it could even mean life or death.

While Jax had rarely traveled as far west as the Bay Area before, he now found himself there more often than not. For weeks, he had been Doctor Tara Grace Knowles' shadow. He now knew the I-680 South, the CA-24 West, and the I-80 West better than he did the way to Lodi or Stockton. And he hated every goddamn mile of the route. Why the hell someone would choose to commute into San Francisco from Concord every day, Jax had no idea.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. He could hazard a guess or two, starting with the cost of living. Residents, even surgical ones, didn't make nearly the same amount of money as their attendings. Maybe that wouldn't matter if Tara worked at a hospital in Buffalo, or Kansas City, or Louisville, but she was at UCSF Parnassus, smack dab in the middle of San Francisco. She could spend half of her monthly salary on rent for a studio apartment, or she could live in her childhood home for free. She could live in an unfamiliar place with strangers for neighbors, or she could live in a smaller community that she knew and where she was known, her neighbors misguided busybodies but still known factors. Despite Jax's loathing for Tara's commute, he was sure the commute with its traffic jams and tolls were a small price to pay for someone who already didn't feel safe in her own skin; there was no need to feel unsafe in her home environment, too.

Even with this logical explanation, Jax still found himself cursing the current standstill he was trapped in, Tara and her SUV several cars ahead, a lane over, and equally as unmoving. If whatever had caused traffic going from Oakland into San Francisco to grind to a complete stop - and they were on a fucking bridge, so it wasn't like they could just get off at the nearest exit and take a different route - wasn't resolved soon, Tara was going to be late for work.

If Jax was going anywhere else, he'd just weave his way through the parked cars, earning more than a few annoyed honks and rude gestures, but at least he'd be free and moving once again. But he went where Tara went, and her SUV couldn't boast the same maneuverability as his bike. It would all be a hell of a lot easier - and more pleasurable, Jax could admit to himself - if he could just give her rides to and from work, Tara holding onto him as he raced his Dyna around the Bay. Not only would this impossible solution save them both the headache of traffic jams, but it would also prove a better way to make sure she was safe.

Speaking of which… the crazy, infuriating, courageous woman was climbing out of her car. Just as he watched her pull a bag out of her backseat - it looked like an oversized lunchbox or a soft-cased tackle box, Jax realized then that Tara had turned her flashers on… right there, smack dab in the middle of what had to be thousands of other vehicles congested on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Before he could even register what the hell she was doing, Tara was rapidly moving forward, running towards unknown danger without an apparent second thought.

He had seconds before she was out of his sight to decide if he should follow her or not. With no plans to approach her or even get close to her that day, Jax hadn't taken many pains in changing up his appearance. While his kutte and other club associated clothing hadn't been worn outside of Charming in months, there was nothing about his manner of dress or grooming that would distract Tara from connecting him to the dozens of other slightly different presentations he had presented her with since he started tailing her.

It was still the middle of the night when Jax had taken off for Contra Costa County, having only gone home for a few hours of actual sleep and to shower, so he grabbed what was comfortable and familiar, slipping on a pair of his jeans, his sneakers, a t-shirt, and he grabbed a plain sweatshirt as he was heading out of the door, the ocean and the fog keeping San Francisco much cooler than its Central Valley counterparts. His hair was still relatively short, and he had been keeping his facial hair clipped and trim, but the only disguising aspect of his appearance that morning were his riding glasses. Yet, despite how much effort he had put into not ever looking exactly the same twice over the weeks he had been watching Tara and the quick, mental run-through of what he had on, Jax was steering his bike onto the shoulder.

With quick, jerky movements, he stood, unstrapped his helmet, and took off after Tara, mentally cursing her, whatever it was they were running towards, and, most of all, himself. Jax had no business even being on that bridge that morning. If he wasn't going to kill her, then he needed to find another way to mourn and move past Opie and Donna's deaths. Tara Knowles meant nothing to Jax, and yet he was pretty much throwing away his life in order to protect her from some cracked nutjob of a Fed. And, now, apparently, he was also protecting her from herself, because what she was doing was anything but safe.

Jax's complaints and even his self-ridicule died upon his lips, however, when he arrived at what was their destination several hundred yards ahead and just over a slight crest in the bridge. The scene before him was… bedlam. Evidently, when you took the biker off the bike, you also took away his observation skills. That was the only explanation for why it took sight for Jax to realize what he was running head first into, the cries of pain and horror, the sting of smoke, the smell of blood and heated metal escaping him until Jax saw for himself the reason for the stopped traffic.

The pileup had to involve at least 30 cars… if not even more. There was glass everywhere, vehicles twisted together like a pretzel made of scrap. Now up close, Jax could also see blown tires and smell gasoline; he could feel death. And in the middle of that hell stood the woman he had chased after. He wanted to shake some sense into her; he wanted to hold her close, pulling her down into the nook between his shoulder and his neck and shield her from the destruction and loss of life surrounding them; and he wanted to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and get them both as far away from that bridge as he possibly could. Instead, Jax walked right up to her and demanded, "what the hell are you doing?"

More to herself than to him, Tara mumbled, "it's going to take rescue vehicles forever to get through this traffic. Even if helicopters are already en route, they can only take so many victims at a time, so we're going to need supplies." As if suddenly remembering that a stranger was yelling at her like he knew her, like he cared, Tara turned to Jax. This time, when she spoke, confident orders had replaced her distracted thoughts. "Get me all the tape and rope, water, and extra clothes that you can find."

Caught off guard by her commands, Jax just gaped at her.

A quick snapping of her fingers in front of his face caused Jax to glare crossly, but Tara was not deterred. "Are you going to help me or not?"

He couldn't hold back a snort of irony. If she only knew…. "Yeah, I'm helping you," he finally said, but it was to her back as she was already moving once more towards the center of the pileup.

Just as Jax was about to turn around and start his scavenger hunt, he heard Tara call out, "And get me something to write with, too, preferably a marker."

He wasn't sure if it was gratitude that they had escaped the wreck and the fates of those who hadn't or if he just presented a figure no one on that bridge that morning wanted to cross, because it didn't take long for Jax to find Tara's supplies. As he jogged back to her mere minutes later, arms laden down with everything from shoe laces to bottles of Evian, he wasn't sure what exactly he was expecting to see, but it sure as hell wasn't Tara driving a large bore needle into some guy's chest.

"Jesus Christ," Jax swore, gingerly working his way through the maze of bodies that now littered the side of the road. While he was gone, Tara had been busy, pulling victims from their cars and lining them up right on the asphalt. There was just enough space between each person for Tara to squeeze through, kneel down, and treat them.

"Good. You're back," she greeted without looking at him. Gesturing with her chin, Tara demanded, "put that stuff down and come here." For what might have been the first time in his life, Jax listened to directions with argument or complaint. After fairly dropping the supplies he had just gathered into a haphazard pile on the interstate, Jax kneeled down beside her.

"Should you really have moved all of these people," he asked her. Jax didn't doubt that Tara knew what she was doing, but she didn't know that. Plus, in all the time he had spent around her, this was the first of any time Jax had spent with her, and he found himself wanting to hear her voice… even if she was barking orders at him. "I mean, what if they have neck or spinal injuries?"

"I'm not some overgrown girl scout with a merit badge in first aid," Tara snarked. The sarcasm surprised Jax, considering the severity of the moment. But what truly shocked him was the feeling of Tara's hands on his as she reached out and placed his open palms against the injured guy's chest. "I'm a doctor, a surgeon, and this man has a tension pneumothorax. He needs a chest tube, but I don't have one of those, so, until the EMTs get here, I need you to make sure this catheter does not move and monitor his respirations."

With their fingers laced together and Tara's hands on top of his, she demonstrated the hold he should use. "We don't have any specific dressing for chest wounds, and I'd like to save what little tape we have for other injuries. If his breathing becomes any more labored, I want you to yell for help. My preference would be to not perform a tube thoracostomy with a hollow pen, but I will if necessary." After letting go, she complimented, "good. Now, just… don't move." And then she was gone once again.

Jax tried to follow her with his gaze, but he was on the ground, and the haze of the accident compromised his view. He wasn't there, though, to keep some stranger alive; he was there to keep Tara alive, and she just absolutely refused to cooperate. Yet, he wouldn't stop doing exactly what she had shown him, somehow her approval mattering to Jax.

Several minutes later, when Tara returned, she wasn't alone. Obviously having discussed their plans prior to their approach and without informing Jax, a middle aged woman with several small but not deep lacerations… and the word 'GREEN' written across her forehead for some strange, unknown reason… sat down across from him, pushing his hands aside as she took his place.

As he stood up once more, Tara bent over and wrote 'RED' in block letters across the prone man's forehead. When she was finished, she told him, "come with me," already walking away before registering whether or not he would obey. But of course he did.

Jogging after her, Jax questioned, "what's with the colors," while pointing to his own, unmarked forehead. So far, he had read black, red, yellow, and green scrawled on victims' faces.

"I'm triaging," she explained. "It'll help the paramedics treat and transfer the patients who need the most care first… if they ever get here."

It was the last thing even remotely conversational said between them for the next ten minutes. First, Tara led him to a teenage girl who appeared to have severe lower body trauma. After holding her down while Tara manipulated her displaced hip back into place, they then had to stabilize both legs with temporary splints to immobilize the broken bones. With nothing for the pain relief, the teenager sobbed and screamed until she lost consciousness. Even if no complications arose from her injuries, the young girl had a long recovery ahead of her.

After that, it was a blur of more stabilizing, stitches, and applying dressings. Jax was part muscle and part lackey. He held patients down, and he fetched supplies. It didn't take them long to form a rapport. He and Tara worked well together. But that didn't astound him nearly as much as the fact that he was enjoying himself. The situation itself was horrible, he found his part in it to be an adrenaline rush, and it felt good to actually be accomplishing something, to be helpful.

As he heard the sound of choppers circling overhead, Jax realized that the moment was up. Tara would go on with her life, getting to experience this high every day, while Jax would return to the shadows. Pulling him from his spiraling thoughts, Tara swore, "fucking vultures!" Her eyes were on the sky, so Jax looked up as well, but he only saw the helicopters, no actual birds of prey. She must have read his confusion, because she elaborated, "that's not help; that's the press. Somehow, someway, they always end up on scene first."

"You say that like you're usually already there, too."

Instead of taking his bait, Tara complimented, "you did well… with all of this. You kept your head; your hands were steady the entire time. And your demeanor was the right blend of compassion and authority. If I didn't know better, I'd say that you've been the first on scene to your fair share of accidents, too."

There was just one last car, one last patient, they needed to triage, and Jax decided to focus on that instead of the kaleidoscope of crime and not accident scenes he had been the cause rather than in assistance of that flashed through his mind. He had only taken a single step in the luxury SUV's direction when Tara instructed Jax to "leave him. He's fine - passed out drunk but otherwise uninjured… as is so often the case, unfortunately."

Pivoting around on the heels of his blood splattered tennis shoes, Jax eyed Tara carefully, closely, filling in her words that had gone unsaid, and she returned his stare, letting him see her. The one untreated man was no doubt the cause of the accident, but Jax suspected that Tara's apathy stemmed from a deeper, more personal wound. For a moment, he wondered if she was thinking about Tig, but that idea was quickly dismissed. Even if she knew about Tig, he had never been a part of her life, and these wounds Jax was witnessing just the surface of? They were the result of years of resentment and bitterness, of hurt. Without having to ask for confirmation, in that moment as they stood facing each other in the middle of a deadly pile up on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Jax Teller learned something new about Doctor Tara Grace Knowles: her mother, her only family, had been an alcoholic.

In that moment that seemed to stretch on between them, a rescue chopper landed and the faintest of sirens started to penetrate the sounds of a major accident's aftermath that Jax had quickly gotten used to. When Tara's cell phone rang, she broke away from Jax's gaze. Without a greeting, she simply barked, "turn on a damn TV. I'll be there when I get there." So, it was the hospital, wondering why their star third year resident was late for morning rounds.

After ending the call as disjointedly as she had answered it, Tara gestured towards the rapidly approaching EMTs. "I should…,"

"Right," Jax agreed, feeling dismissed as he started to walk past her.

But she snagged his arm before he could get too far. Even through the material of his hoodie, he could feel the heat of her touch. She must have felt something, too, because her green gaze ricocheted upwards to latch onto his, a mutual appreciation, an attraction, passing between them. "Thank you."

And then she was gone, Tara leaving Jax behind. As he started moving back towards where he had parked his bike - he wouldn't be going anywhere until Tara left as well, but he didn't need to make his attention and concern for her obvious, Jax could hear her calling out patient status updates and reeling off an impressive list of vitals for someone who had so quickly seen to so many. It was just one more thing that made Tara extraordinary.

She enthralled him.

/

Any lingering sensation of peace or contentment Jax might have felt evaporated when he pulled into his driveway and found his mother lying in wait. Legs and arms crossed before her, Gemma had been leaning against the back of her car, but she pushed off and was stomping towards him in her signature heels before Jax even had a chance to cut his bike's engine. She was obviously spoiling for a fight, and he was exhausted. All Jax wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep until he needed to climb back on his bike once more, retracing his route back into the city to escort Tara home from work for the night. But, by the look on his mother's face, he wasn't getting any rest any time soon.

"Where the hell have you been," she launched into him right away.

"Out," Jax replied simply. He tried to project a bravado like the answer was obvious and that, if anyone there was in the wrong, it was her for questioning him. "Riding."

But she stripped him of his feigned effrontery with a single, innocuous expression. "You're really painting a picture here for me, Jackson." Jax couldn't help himself; he flinched. While, logically, he believed that Gemma didn't, couldn't, know about the secrets he was keeping, the offhand remark hit a little too close to Tara and Grace for his comfort. In an attempt to cover up his reaction, Jax forced a yawn, but the exhaustion was genuine. Gemma didn't buy it, however, and, instead, it made her take a closer look at him. "Where's your kutte?"

"I already told you that I was riding. It wasn't for the club; it was for me."

"More of your grieving," she taunted.

Jax reeled back as if she had physically slapped him. He had been aware that Gemma wasn't happy with the way he was handling Opie's death, but he never thought she would throw it in his face like that or ridicule him for mourning his best friend. "Don't do that," he demanded, finding his voice rising to a level that was ripe for the neighbors to overhear but, in that moment, not caring if they did. "Don't mock me for missing Ope."

But Gemma ignored his censure. "And the blood?"

His gaze dropped to where his mom was staring at his stained shoes. He could have lied to her. He could have told her that it was from a dead animal, that it was old, that there had been so much death in his life recently that he wasn't even sure where it had come from, but Jax quickly dismissed the instinct to deny the truth, because he had done nothing wrong, and admitting to playing the good samaritan, whether connected to Tara or not, wouldn't come back and bite his plans for revenge in the ass. "There was a major accident this morning. I stopped to help."

"So, let me get this straight," Gemma said, her tone taking on a bitter quality. At the same time, she held up a manicured hand, ticking off her charges against him on her blood tipped fingers. "You refuse to be there for your club, for me, for your family, yet you'll go off and help goddamn strangers?!"

"Jesus, Mom, it's not like I sought out a pileup. It was there, and I was capable of gathering supplies. So, I did."

"But you should have been here, supporting the people you love who are left, not running away from your responsibilities!"

"What responsibilities," Jax exploded. "The garage is fine. You're fine. The club is a shitshow, but there's nothing I can do about that. Yet."

"While you were off playing hero," Gemma spat at him, curling her lips in disgust, "child protective services came and took Ellie and Kenny from Mary's care."

As Jax absorbed the news, a silence descended between them. In the stillness, he quickly went over the salient points as he knew them. Whether they couldn't afford the legal fees or had just never thought of it, Opie and Donna didn't leave a will or name legal guardians for their children in the event of their deaths. So, once Opie ate his own gun, Piney but more so Mary started taking care of them. Whether it was a temporary solution or a permanent one, Jax wasn't sure, but now that decision had been taken out of the grandparents' hands.

Finally, in a calm, measured, yet concerned voice, Jax asked, "are the kids alright?"

"How the hell should I know," Gemma yelled, throwing her hands up in emphasis. Before he could respond, she leveled, "more importantly, is that all you have to say for yourself?"

"Me? What the hell could I have done?"

"You should have been here to track down the complaint filed with the state and get whoever objected to Mary and Piney to rescind their objection."

"It doesn't work like that, and you know it, Mom. As soon as that complaint was filed, even if it was taken back, the state would still have to investigate the charge. And, in the meantime, Ellie and Kenny would have to be placed elsewhere. What, are you going to tell me that I should have taken the kids? What about you," Jax challenged before she could respond. He hoped she realized that his question had been rhetorical, but, when Gemma was in a snit, who the hell knows what she would expect of him. "If you're so worried about Ellie and Kenny, why don't you petition the courts for custody?"

"That's not the point, Jackson!"

"No, it actually is the point, Mom: what is best for Ellie and Kenny. Piney and Mary couldn't even raise their own kid together. How the hell were they going to raise their two grandchildren? Plus, getting away from all this shit, from the ugliness of their parents' deaths? It'd probably be good for them."

"Ellie and Kenny are family; they're your best friend - the friend that you're so torn up over his loss that you can't even attend church's - kids, and you want them taken away from us?" Sneering, Gemma accused, "I don't even recognize you right now."

Although she had turned her back on him to stomp back over to her car, Jax offered as a parting remark, "yeah, well, join the club, because nothing has made sense to me for months."

His mother didn't respond, however… at least, not verbally. Instead, she shook her head in disgust as she climbed back into the Caddy, slamming the door behind her. Jax didn't even wait for her to back out of his driveway before he wearily walked towards his front door. As he let himself inside, he heard Gemma peeling off.

The house was stuffy. It felt closed up and like no one lived there. Jax was too tired to care. Because of the blood and who knows what else he could have picked up or touched at the accident site, he should have taken a shower before crawling into bed. But he didn't. As Jax walked through the little ranch house, he stripped off his clothes, letting them land where he dropped them. Naked, he fell face first on top of his unmade bed, but sleep didn't come immediately like he had assumed, like he had hoped. Instead, Jax found himself laying there while he replayed his fight with his mom over and over in his head.

While he stood by everything he said, including his belief that getting away from Charming and everyone in it, including their grandparents, might be the best thing for Ellie and Kenny, Gemma's accusations against him had managed to remind Jax of what was really festering between them, rotting Jax's relationships with his family and club from the inside: Donna's murder and Opie's subsequent suicide. His friends had been taken from their children far too early, and it was yet another reason why Jax couldn't just let their deaths go, why he needed to avenge them. When Tig fired those rounds into the back of Donna's head, he hadn't just killed an innocent woman, wife, and mother or figuratively loaded the gun that Opie would eventually use to blow his own brains out; he had also ruined the lives of two innocent children.

Even if Ellie and Kenny somehow managed to heal and move past the losses of their parents, they'd never be completely free of that grief and the anger it would eventually create. If anyone could understand what they would face as they grew older, it was Jax. He had only lost one parent, and he spent much of his life thinking it was an accident and not a murder, but Ellie and Kenny would know the truth from the start. Jax wasn't sure if that would fuck them up more or less than the reality of his own father's demise had shaken him, but what it did do was fortify Jax's resolve, his desire, his need for retribution.

No matter his qualms or doubts, his excuses needed to stop once and for all. Doctor Tara Grace Knowles was going to die that night. Jax was finally ready to kill her.

/

It was a quiet night. Though the skies, heavy and dense with moisture and humidity, were begging for a storm, so far, the evening had been still. The wind was nonexistent, and thick, soupy air seemed to soundproof all movement, absorbing it. Jax thought it felt a little like walking through a pool. There was a resistance to the dark. It made him push his bike a little harder, made him break out in a slight sweat. By the time he arrived at Tara's house, her street was practically dormant. Here and there the blues of a television screen lit up an otherwise dim and opaque window, but he alone was the only traffic to be seen or heard. Even the neighborhood dogs were, apparently, taking the night off.

Not because he wanted to avoid detection by Tara but wanting to prevent any possible witness from connecting him and his bike to her murder, Jax parked around the block and took the alley towards Tara's little bungelow. Dressed as himself with absolutely nothing to obscure his appearance - white tennis shoes, jeans, knife, SAMCRO t-shirt, SAMCRO sweatshirt, and his kutte, Jax should have felt at ease. But he didn't. In fact, it felt like his own skin didn't fit him anymore, his constantly changing disguises more familiar now than his MC uniform. And nothing felt more out of place than the gun tucked into the back of his pants. He knew it was a fanciful thought, but the metal, warmed by his skin, felt like it was branding him.

Killer. Murderer. Fool.

Just wanting the whole, entire mess that he had made out of his plan for payback over with, Jax moved quickly. His body craved a cigarette, but he refused to pause even long enough for a smoke. The sooner Tara was dead, the sooner he'd finally be able to move on. And he needed to move on. Jax couldn't stay in his current state of impotent rage even one more day. If he didn't do something, then he would do everything, blowing up his own life and the club with it. Ending Tara's life and getting his revenge against Tig was the only actual, viable course of action Jax had.

Not wanting to risk the back gate squeaking and alerting Tara to his presence, Jax simply hopped the short fence, landing silently on the fresh, new spring grass below. Already, there was a heavy dew. As Jax walked across the lawn, he could feel it soaking into the hems of his jeans. Hugging the property line, he avoided the motion sensored lights that, if triggered, would shine down upon him and his approach like a spotlight. The air was filled with the scents of early spring blooms: tulips and hyacinths, poppies and fuschias, azaleas and rhododendrons, early lilacs and late magnolias. For as much attention as Jax had paid to the inside of Tara's house, he'd never really noticed the garden. With the sky full of clouds waiting to deluge their corner of the world with a spring shower, the moon was hidden away, and Jax couldn't see the flowers that surrounded him, but he could smell them, surely a leftover from Grace. The natural perfume acted as yet another buffer, swelling and silencing the dark.

It was a quiet night… until it wasn't.

The scream, her scream, only lasted a second before it was abruptly cut off, but it was unmistakable. Help! And then something, or more likely someone, made sure that she couldn't call out again. Later, Jax would realize that he shouldn't have been able to just push his way into Tara's house. She was vigilant. She took self-defense lessons, and she carried a gun, and she always kept her doors and windows shut tight and locked. He had checked. Yet, when he heard her cry out, he didn't stop to think about anything besides save Tara; protect Tara.

The light over the kitchen sink was on and lit his path through the small house, but Jax didn't need it to know where he was going. Before he even entered the hallway which led to her bedroom, Jax had his gun in hand, the Springfield Custom Professional 1911-A1 customized with a suppressor. He'd kept his leather riding gloves on, and, as he approached the ajar door, Jax flexed his hands once, twice, to ease the tension which had suddenly taken over his body before cupping the trigger with his right index finger.

With the toe of his sneaker, he eased the bedroom door open, the sight before him bringing bile surging into his mouth. Although Tara wasn't completely naked, it was not because of a lack of effort by the man, the AFT agent Jax had watched snoop around her place a couple of weeks back, assaulting her. Tara's yoga pants were down around her ankles, hanging on by just one foot, and one of the straps of her tank top had been ripped, slipping down to expose one of her bare breasts. Her hair was wild from struggling, from being gripped too tight, and she had a glazed look to her eyes. Whether this was fear and adrenaline or something more, Jax couldn't tell in those fleeting first moments when he walked into the room, but it was obvious that Tara had been smacked around.

Her lip was cut, bleeding, and bruises were already forming on the pale, delicate skin of her neck and arms, her thighs. The fucking Fed had one hand clamped over her mouth and other was attempting to drag down Tara's little black panties. Although he was sitting on top of and leaned over her, using his body weight to keep her trapped beneath him, Tara still struggled for all she was worth. She wrenched her hips back and forth, trying to dislodge her attacker, and thrashed her head and upper body around, moaning and sobbing beneath the cop's suffocating grip. Her face was flushed from the efforts and from the lack of oxygen, and that alone would have been enough to drive Jax forward, gun in hand, to shoot the would-be rapist off of her. But then the asshole opened his mouth.

"You're nothing but white trash," the agent yelled, accused. He sounded both angry and incredulous. "Your mother was a slut, a biker's whore… until he got bored with her, and then she became a drunk. But you think you're too good for me?" After finishing his little speech, the Fed renewed his efforts to get Tara out of her underwear, letting go of her mouth long enough to slap her into temporarily stunned silence only to then grab at her hips, holding her down and wrapping his grip around the sides of the thin fabric. While they struggled, he started speaking again, this time mumbling more to himself than to Tara. "No, no," the cop laughed hysterically. "That's not how this works. I love you, and, goddamn it, you're going to love me back if it's the last…."

That's as far as Jax let him get before he stepped up to the bed, leveled his gun to the Fed's temple, and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter hit first, splattering against the far wall, its paintings suddenly being reworked to look like post-apocalyptic nightmares. Next, with an almost cartoonish slow motion, the dead body fell to the hardwood floors with a dull thump, the area rug under the bed cushioning the fall. And, finally, Tara moved, scrambling across the bed in her wide-eyed fear and blind desperation. Jax didn't even have a chance to put his gun down before she wrapped herself around him in a life-affirming embrace.

Dropping the just-used weapon onto the rumpled bed, Jax hugged Tara tight and close, lifting her up to swing them both around so he could sit with her on his lap. She was sobbing and taking deep, hiccuping breaths. Jax could feel Tara's heart racing where he gently had a hand cradling the back of her neck and guiding her face into his shoulder and away from the carnage he had created. Even as she fought to breathe, to regain control, Tara's hysteria kept spiraling and spiraling until she was on the verge of a panic attack. In between her sobs and her anguished gulps for air, Jax could hear words that did not form cohesive thoughts but still managed to paint a damning, heartbreaking picture. Restraining Order. I left. Get away from. Followed me. Rape. Going to die.

Jax wasn't sure if it was two or twenty minutes, but, eventually, Tara's cries became just sniffles, her breathing evened out, her grip loosened, and her tortured confessions ceased. When she pulled back to look at him, her unblinking eyes searching his and her face just inches away, Jax expected her to cringe away from him in recognition and horror. Instead, she unwound her arms from where they were curled around his back, so she could bring her hands up to cup his face, to smooth her thin, talented fingers along his jaw, to scratch her manicured nails through his day-old scruff. These gentle, whispered touches and not her desolate clutches from moments before finally told Jax that, when she looked at him, she didn't see the man who had just executed her attacker, or the guy who helped her triage victims at the accident scene, or the shadow that had been mimicking her every move around the Bay for the past couple of months. No, when Tara stared into his eyes, she saw herself, safe.

It was the shock of her lips touching his more so than the kiss itself which made Jax gasp. But as tentative as the first brushing together of their mouths was, as soon as his lips parted, Tara pushed forward, pushed into him, encircling her arms around his neck and taking his mouth as her own. The kiss was bruising. Jax could taste the tangy saltiness of Tara's tears, of her bloody lip.

Jax knew what this was. He knew that Tara wasn't kissing him; she wasn't so urgently undressing him that she was shaking. In that moment, Tara would have picked any man but the one who had tried to take that choice away from her. It was adrenaline, and it was survival, and it was even a little bit of a fuck you to the dead body not any more than six feet away from them. He also knew that, in letting her use him, he was taking advantage of the situation and her. But, even knowing all of this, there wasn't a single part of Jax that would have pushed Tara away. He simply didn't have the willpower to do so.

It didn't matter what Jax had told himself he was doing there that night, holding Tara, entering Tara, cumming with Tara, he knew that he never would have gone through with it. He had physically wanted her since the moment he laid eyes on her. As he watched her, as he watched over her, as he worked at her side, and came to know her in a way, that attraction only grew, becoming more, becoming deeper, becoming everything. And it wasn't because he found her in danger, his protective instincts overtaking his retaliation plans.

Laying there afterwards in a room that smelled like death and sex, like lemons and clean laundry, like blood, with Tara cocooned against him, asleep, Jax admitted that, while he didn't know how he would have walked away, if the ATF agent hadn't been there, Tara would have slept the night through, undisturbed and peaceful. Given how she had come into his life, it was more than a little sick and twisted, but Jax couldn't have killed Tara, because he couldn't even fathom hurting her; Jax wouldn't have killed Tara, because he was in love with her.

Come morning, when Tara's mind and emotions finally caught up with her reality, whatever had happened between them, whatever they had shared, would be over before it even had a chance to begin. She would hate him, and she would have every right to. And Jax? At best, he would be left with a broken life, lost and alone with nowhere to put his grief for Opie and Donna and his regret over Tara; at worst, he'd fry for committing capital murder.

He could have left. He could have run off into the dark, nothing more than a ghost of the night when Tara woke up instead of the very real, very solid man underneath her. But Jax stayed. Because just like there had been no power on earth that could have stopped him from being with her, nothing, not even his own finely honed sense of self-preservation, would make Jax give Tara up, even a small part of her, a moment sooner than he had to. No, when Tara confronted him, and his actions, and his secrets, he'd give her the truth. All of it. And, in doing so, he would put his fate in her strong, capable, surgeon hands, her judgement a scalpel that could heal or harm.