Jax's plan to slight Clay backfires and gets another member hurt, leaving a battered and confused Gemma to feel like it's all her fault. Meanwhile, Tig does what he can to take back his rightful place next to Clay, which only ends up pushing Sydney further away.
General trigger warnings for this story: Language, smut, mentions of rape, abuse, drug use/overdose, violence/death, racism/gang activity.
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CHAPTER 13: SMOKE AND MIRRORS
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Tara crept across the pavement on the soles of her black leather boots, to the point where she was almost tiptoeing as she scurried through the dark compound that was void of any bikes - a sight that, a few months ago, would've had her elated, but now it only sent the growing chill further up her spine to know that Gemma had been left alone.
She felt her feet carrying her even faster, sending her gliding towards the office door where the only source of light could be seen, praying that she was not about to walk into something horrible - something else horrible.
She sighed as she peered into the doorway to see Gemma, asleep in her desk chair. Her prayers had been answered, but as usual, they had been answered with a double-edged sword, because though the sight wasn't the kind of horrible that she wished she hadn't had to fear, it was still a kind of horrible that made her heart crack beneath her chest.
She smiled sadly, crossing the small room where she crouched next to the battered woman, slowly sliding her hand over her's where she watched her jump in a way that she understood all too well.
"It's me." She whispered, staring deep into her eyes in the calming way that Sydney learned to ease her mind with after each time that she had inadvertently startled her with her touchiness. "Sorry I'm so late…"
"Wha-" Gemma finally caught her breath as she looked around the dark room. "What time is it?"
"It's almost 10:00 P.M.." Tara watched her clutch her forehead as tears filled her panicked eyes. "How are you?" She asked gently.
"I'm fine." Gemma nodded as she struggled to get to her feet with a grunt. "Gotta get to the house… Neeta is probably worried sick." She scoffed, cursing herself for the only moment that hadn't been agonizing to endure, in the last twenty-four hours.
"Gemma…" Tara followed her to the door where she turned to face her with a pain that she could only imagine the magnitude of. "You need to talk to somebody about what happened… It doesn't mean you're weak, it just-"
"That's why I've got you." Gemma whispered, nodding as she squeezed Tara's hand before making her way out to the car.
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Tig rolled to a stop behind the van in the dark alley as Laroy's vehicles pulled into the discreet lane from the opposite side, and drove towards them.
"Alright, boys." The Sergeant nodded to Opie and Bobby who had pulled up beside him, making to dismount his machine in order to lead the brigade, but his body didn't move as his eyes fell on Opie who sighed with his gaze glued to his fuel tank. He blinked, exchanging a glance with Bobby where he nodded for the older man to take the lead.
"I, uh." He turned his attention to Opie, but he couldn't quite meet his eyes as he too glued his gaze downwards. "I'm sorry about Syd… She, uh-" He cleared his throat as it became lodged with yet another lie. "She's just hungover."
"She didn't say anything that wasn't the truth." Opie nodded curtly. "I need to get right with that."
Tig chewed the inside of his lip as he nodded along, wishing that he could protest; that his actions wouldn't have given him something to protest, in the first place.
Clay raised a brow as he rounded the back of the van to see Bobby unloading the guns, his scowl deepening as his gaze landed on a very guilty looking Tig, and a very sad looking Opie - a sight that had the power to dismantle the entire club, in seconds.
Tig's head snapped up when he heard a whistle from his President, shaking his sorrow away and getting back to business where he scurried over to help Bobby.
"Two dozen AKs." The Sergeant announced with a curt nod.
"Where's Taylor Swift at?" Teaj nodded with a sly grin.
"Couldn't make it." Clay forced a smile as he answered the very good question that once again, Tig should have eliminated the need to ask.
Laroy pursed his lips as he nodded slowly. "Pay the man." He told Teaj, both leaders deciding to let it slide - only because of what had transpired earlier in the day.
Tig smiled sarcastically as he took a step forward and swiped the envelope from the shorter man, but the smile didn't stay on his face long as the sound of gunshots ripped through his ears, and sent him dropping to the ground.
"Shit!" Bobby howled as he clutched his shoulder where he had been hit.
Tig's heart felt like it was about to burst in his chest as it pounded with an anxiety that was all too familiar, for far too many reasons. But he shook the thought away as he pulled out his gun and immediately started firing off warning shots. "Go, go!" He yelled to Chibs as he covered him, allowing the Scot and the prospect to haul their injured brother to safety.
"Come on, fool!" He heard from one of Laroy's men, looking around to see that everybody else was scrambling to get behind whatever they could, and he was the only one standing out in the open. Just like a Sergeant should have been.
He nodded, taking his time backing up as he allowed the Niners to take over the retaliation - searching for the source of the enemy fire, which he found to be an old car parked in a hidden driveway, just feet away.
"Clay, it's the Mayans!" Chibs hollered from the other side of the van as the enemy fire in question began to reveal itself as coming from multiple locations - multiple locations that had them surrounded.
"Bobby's bleeding real bad!" Half-Sack called from between two dumpsters, trying to keep his composure in the scene that took him directly back to his days in the army.
The Sons all exchanged silent looks as they tried to devise a game plan to get out of there before it was too late, when the sound of screeching tires broke up the gunshots that immediately ceased.
Teaj nodded furiously as he readied himself for what he knew he needed to do as right-hand, launching himself out from behind the van where he shot blindly at the oncoming truck where a man jumped out of the bed and took him down with a single shot before bolting over the guns.
Clay sighed through his heavy breathing as he realized what this ambush was really about. "Hold your fire, man." He shook his head at a fuming Laroy who was about to send another one of his men out to die for this. "Let them have the guns."
"Those are our guns!" The younger man yelled over the chaos.
"We'll get you more goddamn guns!" He rolled his eyes, ripping the envelope of money out of Tig's pocket and whipping it towards the gang leader. "We gotta take care of our gu-"
But the President trailed off as his eyes widened while he watched Opie stand from where he had hidden behind a car, his eyes hollowing as he walked himself directly into the line of fire after watching Teaj go down.
"Ope…" Tig shook his head slowly as he saw what he knew was happening...
"Opie!" Chibs screamed as the Mayans hauled the guns into the bed of the trunk, and turned their attention to where he was standing, motionless.
"Jesus Christ." Clay winced.
"Ope!" Tig screamed as the Mayan lifted his gun, snarling as he ran out after the rogue member who, at the last second, lifted his gun without a drop of fear for the shots being fired at him, and managed to take down both men before the truck sped away.
All that could be heard was a deafening silence as the ringing in their ears took over, turning their attention to Chibs as he assessed Bobby's wound.
"Is it bad?" Opie snapped out of his haze , looking for the closest distraction once he realized that he had drawn an audience.
"Nah, it's just a scratch." Chibs joked as he and Half-Sack lifted Bobby to his feet. "Let's go!"
"Real nice homecoming." Bobby scoffed.
"Get the hell out of here!" Clay yelled to both his crew and Laroy's, his concern-filled gaze lingering on Opie who practically bolted to his bike, and hightailed it out of there before anybody could ask any questions.
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Tara took a shaky breath as she slowly followed a limping Gemma up the short pathway to Jax's front door, the ringing of her cellphone in the pocket of her fitted jacket startling her as it sliced through the frigid night air.
Gemma felt her heart spike as the only noise that could be heard for what felt like miles, sent her directly back into fight or flight. She winced as she forced it down, taking the opportunity to get herself inside and away from Tara's gaze while she was distracted.
"I'm sorry." The Matriarch began apologizing profusely as she crossed the threshold to see the brand new nanny sitting at the kitchen table with a bible in her hand. "I went back to the office to get some work done." She shook her throbbing head before instinctually clutching her forehead. "Fell asleep. You didn't have to stay."
"It's okay." Neeta nodded with a comforting smile that Gemma wished she could express her gratitude for. "Feel better." She nodded as she got to her feet, pulling her purse across the table where she made to pack away her bible, but she felt Gemma's hands on her arm, stopping her.
Gemma blinked, her lips trembling as she tried to find the words that she would've struggled to get out on a good day, but the moment of grace was cut short as Tara burst through the door.
"Excuse me…" She shrunk down once she realized that she had clearly interrupted something sacred . "I, um." She blinked as she looked between the two women. "I have to go to the clubhouse… Medical emergency ." She was confident that she could trust Neeta, and she was now fairly confident that Gemma did too, but that was a conversation that they hadn't had the time to have yet, and she wasn't about to rely on her assumptions in a time like this.
"Oh, shit." Gemma sighed - her usual reaction to medical emergencies , but her sigh of discontent was quickly replaced by the sudden need for air as a panic washed over her stronger than any hot flash that she had experienced since she'd started menopause. Because she realized that this may have happened because of them . Because of her .
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Tig stood motionlessly beside Gemma in the middle of the clubhouse as Tara stuffed as much gauze as she could into Bobby's profusely bleeding wound, the commotion doing nothing to snap him out of it as his ears began ringing, and his eyes blurred. He knew that Sydney was right as he examined her battered face, her baggy clothes - two things that had never gone hand in hand for his old friend. He had known Gemma for decades , and she was no stranger to taking a punch every now and then, but anytime that her face wasn't perfect, she had always made sure that the rest of her appearance was .
"Is it bad?" Bobby gurled as he held a bloody towel against his collarbone.
Gemma blinked nervously once she realized that her attempt to act natural , was only drawing attention to how unnatural she was acting - stepping out of Tig's sad blue gaze, and making her way over to the injured man.
"You're lucky." Tara nodded. "It ripped right through."
"Oh, Jesus Christ…" Jax sighed, shaking his head as he stood in the doorway after narrowly missing the apparent bloodbath.
"Mayans." Tig nodded, doing whatever he could to distract himself from the truth that he knew he couldn't handle right now, but the distraction only hammered his brain with more unbearable news; that maybe the two were connected… "They crashed our delivery." He shook the possibility away.
Jax barely flinched when he realized that he had likely been the cause of this - because apparently Tig didn't realize it, exchanging a prideful nod with Tara as she pulled on a pair of gloves. Maybe they could make this life work, after all .
"You okay, bro?" He crouched to meet Bobby's eyes.
"Yeah." The bearded man winced. "I'm in good hands." He looked up at Tara gratefully.
"They got away with two cases of the AKs." Half-Sack reported to his VP.
Gemma suddenly felt like the room was shrinking, like the walls were closing in on her as she realized exactly what had happened. They were still selling guns to colour, because of her. The ambush had happened, because of her. Bobby had been hurt, because of her.
She placed her hand over her throbbing cheek that was only beginning to sear as her face heated up, her fingers falling overtop of her trembling lips as she feared that she was going to be sick.
"Oh, man…" Jax shook his head sympathetically once he got his first look at his mother since her car accident.
"Yeah." Gemma painted on a silly frown as she tried not to jump out of her skin when Jax placed what she was sure was meant to be a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Jax." Clay's voice cut the moment short. "In here." He ordered.
Tig still hadn't been able to form the connection between Jax's rogue efforts the day before, and the Mayan attack as his eyes fell back on Gemma who immediately turned away from him, and made her way across the room.
His gaze followed her, his heart followed her, but his feet didn't. He had just started taking steps in the right direction, he couldn't afford to backtrack.
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"That little judgment call you made?" Clay raised a brow from where he was leant back against the table with his hands on his hips. "For the good of the club ? Almost killed Bobby." He sneered.
"I see that." Jax nodded.
Clay stared into his hollow blue eyes for a few seconds - those same hollow blue eyes that had almost cost him his club, once already. "Whatever you may think the truth is? Everything that I do, is to protect what we got." He kept his voice as level as possible. "It's never arbitrary, and it's never reactive." He spit out. "I've been doing this for thirty years, I know a few things."
"Taking that tag off the Mayan? That was the right decision, and you know it." Jax nodded as sincerely as he had in the face of his stepfather, in months.
Clay sighed. He did know that - but that wasn't the point. "You wanna challenge me? Fine. I don't give a shit." He pushed himself off of the table. "But the minute that it stops becoming about this club, and it starts becoming personal? They'll know that." He nodded out the window. "They'll lose respect for you, and they won't trust you anymore. And then you'll be handlin' everything on your own." He growled menacingly. "Think about that."
And the President hoped that he would. Because it was the truth, but it was a truth that he hoped the younger man wouldn't try to learn in the same way that he did...
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Tig tried to calm his heavy breathing as he made his way up the path to Sydney's house much faster than he had any other day in the last three months, doing everything that he could to ignore the logical part of his brain that was telling him that something could have happened to her in the time that they had been apart, the same way that it had happened to Gemma. He blinked as he tackled the short set of steps, two at a time - his panic only building as he realized that he couldn't see any light coming from inside the house, and both her car and bike were in the garage.
Maybe she went to a shoot . He used the ironic excuse to try and calm his racing mind, but he knew that Luann hadn't been holding anything tonight after the asset seizure, and subsequent partnership meeting with Jax.
Georgie . The lightbulb went off as he turned his key, and the lock clicked open. Maybe she had gone to Georgie's with the other girls . But that was yet another ironic excuse that did nothing to satisfy his worry for her wellbeing.
"Syd?" He called once he stepped over the threshold, getting no reply. "Sydney!" He called again, getting more frantic as he bolted up the stairs to find the second floor just as dark and as empty as the first. "Fuck…" He bit his quivering lip, pulling out his phone where he dialed the number that he had become far too familiar with, praying that she had just ended up going out with the girls, going out of town, going somewhere to get away from him - he didn't care, as long as she was safe.
But his heart only continued to sink as he listened to the line trill until finally her voicemail picked up, another thing that he was getting far too familiar with. He ended the call, shoving his phone back into the pocket of his jeans as he flew back down the stairs, and did one final sweep of the house where something caught his eye; a glimpse of white-blonde hair, shining under the moonlight where she sat on the white couch that took up a majority of the back porch.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he stalked over to the sliding glass door, yanking it open with a little more effort in the cooler night air as November rolled in. "There you are." He huffed as he stepped out onto the freshly stained deck that she had insisted on doing herself - something that, at the time, he had found attractive, but now realized was likely just a reason to escape his company.
Sydney said nothing as she stared into the distance, nodding her heavy head as the ice cubes clinker in her glass of whiskey.
"Aren't you cold out here?" He raised a brow as a chill rolled up his spine even under the multiple layers that he was wearing, while she sat in nothing but an oversized hoodie.
"No." She answered distantly as she lifted the glass to her lips.
Tig sighed as the hollowness in her voice brought him back to reality - a rocky reality that wasn't much better than the swirling clouds of regretful truth that he was desperately trying to outrun. He knew that he couldn't tell her about what had happened without those clouds raining down on any progress that he had been trying to make - especially after what she had told him earlier tonight. And wet rocks were much easier to slip on, so instead he sat himself down next to her without a word.
Sydney felt herself tense up as his arm brushed against hers, the brief contact sending a shock through her body even through their collectively thick clothing. She forced her muscles to relax - which only made her tremble - before draining her glass.
Tig frowned as he felt the familiar fear radiating off of her as she tried to sit in his presence without jumping out of her skin. He took a deep breath, hanging his head as he allowed himself to feel the pain in his heart that he had tried valiantly to push down.
"Sydney…" He sighed sadly. "Are we gonna keep ignoring all this shit?"
"I don't know." She answered quickly, her eyes remaining unfocused as she continued to avoid his. "You won't talk… I won't ask…" She shook her head. "Maybe it's better that way…" She finally turned to face him. "We gave transparency a shot, tried to be people that we aren't - look where that's gotten us…" She nodded just as sadly.
Tig blinked through what was easily the most abundant wave of shock that he had experienced during the particularly shocking day. "I-" He felt his throat lock up as he shook his head incredulously. "I don't wanna go back to that…" He had no idea how to tell her that he would've exploded had he not been able to be transparent with her, but apparently achieving what he always thought had been an unattainable transparency on a club level , had only muddied the waters of their relationship. "Keeping shit from each other." He shook his head.
"I do." She nodded sadly. Because at least when she hadn't known every horrible thing about him, he'd still felt like there was good that he could show her. "There was a reason that people thought that we moved too fast…" She looked back down into the bottom of her empty glass.
Tig's brows furrowed. "I thought that there was a reason why we didn't care what anyone else thought?" He felt the weight getting heavier where he was bracing himself against his knee to try and look into her downturned eyes.
"So did I." She looked back to him with tear-filled eyes - something that she had not allowed herself to do in the face of his demons, since the day that they had won. "But I don't think that we have that reason on our side anymore…"
"Sydney…" His weakened voice came out in a plea as he felt his entire face starting to sting with the threat of tears. "Don't do this… Don't push me away." He shook his head as he tried to search for the right thing to say as the volume in his head suddenly seemed to be fully cranked. "I can't lose you right now…" Not after how hard he had fought to keep her.
"You're not losing me." She shook her head firmly. "But… I'm losing you." Her voice cracked.
He blinked through his fuzzy head. He had no idea how she had managed to keep her composure the last time that they'd had this conversation - a conversation that he still regretted, every day. "Please don't get rid of me…" He shook his head as right and wrong began to blur together, and desperation took over. "Don't get rid of me like you got rid of Hap, I can't take tha-"
"I didn't get rid of Hap." She snapped, her head whipping towards him angrily - the only thing that his subconscious knew would prove to the even angrier voices, that she cared. "Hap got rid of me."
"Syd…" He immediately felt a punch of guilt as he watched her chest begin to heave, even under the giant sweater that she was wearing.
"I know better than to beg someone to stay." She sneered through her clenched teeth as her hateful gaze bore a hole of shame right through his selfish tactics.
"You know, Syd…" He sighed as he twirled a ring around his finger. "Sometimes, in this life? We say shit that we don't mean…" He hadn't meant to upset her with the reminder of both men that had turned her away, and it was still his full intention to patch things up between what he knew was just a misunderstanding with Happy, because the weight of one rejection would surely be far lighter than the weight of two…
"Well then let this be your lesson not to." She growled as she slammed her glass down onto the table, and stomped back into the house.
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"Your intel was good." Ethan Zobelle heard down the line, looking over his shoulder to be sure that Weston couldn't hear the accented man on the other end. "I owe you."
"Yes you do." The cigar dealer nodded, waiting for a farewell, but he got nothing. Gangs , he sighed, snapping the phone shut.
"Who was that?" Weston scowled as he looked up from the desk where had been tirelessly entering repetitive details into the company start up program.
"Oh, it was just…" Zobelle blinked as he stuffed the phone back into his suit pocket. "A friend from my church."
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Sydney did her best to stifle her labored breathing when she finally heard Tig coming up the stairs, swallowing the sobs that she had been discreetly choking on for the last thirty minutes. But the clenching behind her chest was almost unbearable as he entered the room. She hated the excitement that she felt as soon as his aura tickled her senses, she hated the comfort that she felt as soon as his scent was close enough to recognize, she hated the cease of her nervous system the second that he touched her in a way that she knew wouldn't satisfy her. But most of all, she hated that she let it all happen, because it was the only thing that felt normal.
Tig felt the last piece of his heart cracking behind his chest as he stood at the foot of the bed, watching her shoulders shake. It wasn't the piece that his father had spit on, or the piece that Colleen had trampled, or even the piece that Juliet had taken with her into oncoming traffic that day. It was the scratched, damaged piece of his past that Sydney had taken the time to sand down, and repaint.
Sydney squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the bed dipping behind her, waiting for the agonizing comfort that would wash over her and, for a split second, make her feel like she wasn't a complete failure for her inability to handle what she had spent her whole life preparing for.
Tig pulled her back against him, holding her close as he laid his cheek in the wet spot on her pillow that he knew was from the tears that he'd caused. He shook his head against the back of her neck as he let his own tears coat his cheeks, and fall into her mass of blonde curls before pressing his lips to her cheek in hopes of telling her that this wouldn't be forever.
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Song for this chapter
1965 - Zella Day
