16
JAX IS REALLY ALIVE
Chapter 6 Recap
Jax and Tara have a relationship discussion and Jax discovers Tara isn't sure about her feelings.
He tells her he needs her and she tells him that she doesn't want him to need her to fix his world.
CHAPTER 7 Guess Who Is Still Alive or
FORK YOU FORK ME FORK OFF
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Originally, I planned to write this story for two hours every week and post it, but it just wasn't working for me. The narrative was too choppy, so I have decided to just write this normally. That means longer chapters with a more complex plot.
Jax sat back down on his bar stool, somewhat dazed by the turn the conversation had taken. She didn't want him to need her to fix his world. What the hell did she mean? Did he really want to know? No, he didn't really want to know, but sooner or later he was going to have to repair his relationship with Tara if he wanted to sleep with her and he really wanted to sleep with her.
There was just something about her that was intoxicating, that drew him to her and made him want her more than he ever had before. Maybe it was because she had done what no other woman had done before—turn him down for sex. That wasn't all. Part of it was this new strong Tara. He found her incredibly sexy.
"Can you explain what you meant by you don't want me to need you?"
Tara began to apply the tattoo removal cream with the cotton swab to his back.
"Tell me if it burns."
"Answer my question."
"I wasn't trying to duck your question. You can't rely on another person to give your life direction. You find your direction and you follow it. I'm not your compass or your true north—whatever the hell that means. You have this rare opportunity to start over having learned from all your past mistakes.
"You are free of outside influences for the first time in your life. No Gemma, no Clay and no SAMCRO. You are completely in charge of your life. It can be whatever you want it to be. The Paralorns have gotten massively wealthy and you can have access to some of that. They feel very strongly that we're their children and they want to help us."
Jax rubbed his hand over his face. Tara wasn't a fan of facial hair. Maybe shaving would help him seduce her.
He remembered that there was another subject besides sex that he needed to think about. What was it? Oh, yeah. Now, he remembered. His future. He needed to think about his future now that death wasn't going to rescue him from his problems.
"When I was on my bike, driving head on into that semi, I felt like a weight was off my shoulders. I'd be free of all the mistakes I'd made. I felt euphoria. It was like how you felt as a kid on the last day of school. Now, I feel like I've just discovered I have to go to summer school."
"I get that. You just need to look at this as an opportunity to live your life in a better way."
"That's why I need you. I don't want to make the same mistakes and I need your help navigating this new life—if I agree to the alien thing. The time without you has really made me realize how you kept me from turning into a monster. I need your influence. You were the only good influence in my life."
"You have to figure out what you want to do with your life. That's your responsibility. I can try to be a good influence, but ultimately, it's up to you."
Tara began to wipe off the cream.
"Your skin is taking to this cream really well. I can remove the whole reaper tattoo today. I can do both arms tomorrow."
"I feel like you are erasing my history."
"I guess I am. They attract too much attention."
"I know. That's why I'm not complaining about you removing them. I used to be so proud of them. Who removed yours? That guy?"
"Ryland? Yes. He took mine off. He's a doctor."
"Aliens get sick?"
"They are just like us except they don't get cancer. Ry's been trying to figure out how to get that immunity into humans."
This news just made Jax hate Ryland more. Of course, he would be doing some sort of noble research to benefit the human race and impress Tara.
"Hale is alive."
"Hale? He's part alien too?"
"Yes. He's returning to Charming. He's replacing the woman that took over for Roosevelt. She doesn't know it yet, but she's about to get busted on a bunch of corruption charges. She's been on the take for years. Hale is going to get another stab at removing SAMCRO from Charming."
"He won't succeed," Jax said.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that. You aren't there anymore. You may have a lot of confidence in Tig and Chibs being able to run SAMCRO, but Hale's smarter. I think he'll succeed unless SAMCRO recruits someone with a better brain."
"Maybe, I'll get alienized and then I'll go back and join SAMCRO and become president again."
"I'll kill you myself before I let that happen," Tara said, her voice deadly quiet.
Jax stood up, turned and looked at her.
"I wasn't serious."
"I was. I won't let you go back to that. I hate SAMCRO. They are just a bunch of thugs who make money by sexually exploiting women. They leave a trail of broken women and broken families. Not one of them is a decent father. They all need to grow up, quit pretending to be brothers and do some good for a change."
"I had no idea you felt this way."
"I tried hard to love SAMCRO. I really did. It didn't work. I tried to tolerant them. That didn't work either. It used to make me so angry when you would go off on some SAMCRO adventure and leave me with Abel and Thomas. Abel would always ask where you were. What was I supposed to tell him? Your father is busy playing brother with a pack of criminals? I wanted you to love me, so I swallowed how I really felt about SAMCRO. I loved you so much, I was willing to pay any price to keep you. I'm not willing to pay that price anymore. You aren't worth it. No man is."
Jax was dumbfounded. This new version of Tara was a lot stronger and saw life a little too clearly than was comfortable for him.
"I think you need another beer," Tara said. She went to the refrigerator, pulled out two beer bottles and opened them. "The Paralorns like to make their own beer. These are kind of a cross between root beer and real beer, but it packs a stronger punch than hard liquor."
"Sounds like it's just what I need."
Jax took a long pull from the bottle.
"That's really good."
"It's about the only liquor I enjoy drinking. Once they perfected the recipe, they gave the recipe to the robots who make more beer whenever there are less than twelve bottles in the frig."
Jax finished his beer and grabbed another one out of the refrigerator and opened it. He took another long pull. He was finally feeling calmer.
"JT reached the same conclusion you did; that being a member of SAMCRO and being a good father didn't work. I think he wanted out of the club or he wanted to change it into a non-outlaw club. I think that was the true reason Gemma and Clay killed him."
Jax returned to his bar stool, beer bottle in hand, so Tara could wipe the cream from his back.
"Perfectly removed. No one will ever be able to tell there was a tattoo," Tara said, standing back and admiring her handiwork.
"Can you finish the removal today?"
"If you don't mind sitting for another hour or two."
"I'd like to just get it over with."
"OK. I think we should have dinner first. I'm really hungry. For some reason, a club sandwich sounds so good to me right now."
"That does sound good if you add fries to it."
Tara ordered the food.
Tara sat down next to Jax on the bar stool waiting for the robots to prepare their food.
"Donna's also alive."
Jax shook his head.
"I'm still not used to the returning from the dead part."
"Prepare to really be shocked then. Opie's back. He and Donna had a tough time of it, but they put their marriage back together. It took Donna awhile to get past Opie's moving on to Lyla when she'd only been dead about thirty seconds."
"He got with Lyla because he couldn't function without Donna. He didn't know how to be a parent to his kids. Five years in prison will do that to a guy."
"He and Donna have worked things out. She's pregnant."
"It's hard for me to imagine Opie is alive. I saw him get killed."
"You also saw Hale die and you held my dead body in your arms."
"I know. What I mean is how? I saw him in his coffin."
"The prison was more than happy to cover up what really happened to Opie. That took care of preventing the autopsy. I think the official cause of death was something like slipped and hit his head."
"Skeeter did the funeral/wake stuff. I saw Opie's body. He embalmed him. Wouldn't that have killed Opie? Alien or not?"
"Skeeter's a full, came over on the spaceship, alien. After Opie returned to life, Skeeter gave him an injection that caused him to appear dead. He was in a kind of coma at the wake."
Tara heard a beep. She went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet and grabbed the plates.
"Being able to order food and have it appear still seems like magic to me," Tara said.
"Like room service."
"Yeah, like room service. You just say "cookie" and then tell it what you want to eat. It will ask questions if it needs more info. At the beep, the food is ready. You just open the cabinet door and there's your food."
"Maybe I'll bring you breakfast in bed tomorrow."
"You really have a one track mind."
"It was breakfast," Jax protested. "That's all that was on my mind."
"Yeah, right," Tara said.
By the time Jax finished his sandwich and fries, he realized exactly what was going on with the aliens.
"The aliens were using Charming as a test site."
Tara nodded.
"Yes. You and I were mistakes. My parents came to California from Chicago shortly after my mother got pregnant. They wanted to tell his parents in person. The Paralorns can sniff out a pregnant woman by detecting the increase in hormone levels. When they saw my parents here, they assumed they lived in Charming. If they had known my parents were only visiting, they wouldn't have done the procedure. Gemma came to Charming shortly after she got pregnant with you. She wanted to tell Unser. Again, they made a mistake thinking that she lived here. That worked out because she moved here."
"Where is Opie now?"
"He lives in Maine. He and Donna own one of those dollar stores. I'm not sure of its name. Soon, they will get their kids back from Lyla. A couple of guys will go to Lyla and explain that Donna and Opie are in a witness protection program and it's now safe enough for their children to join them. They will show her a bunch of very convincing paperwork. I don't think Lyla's going to fight to keep the kids."
"No, I think she'll be relieved."
"They are thinking about bringing out the alien side to their kids. If they did that, they could come back to Charming. No one would recognize them."
"Bringing out the alien?"
"It sounds better than killing their kids so they'll come back to life and look different to humans."
"When can I see him?"
"This situation needs to calm down a bit. You can call him and see him on screen. The communications on both ends is completely secure. Maybe he can reassure you about the alien change. I wish there were a better alternative for you, but I can't see any other way for you except prison."
"Prison for life or Death Row or life as an alien," Jax said.
"I wish you wouldn't think of it like that. It's not some sinister, mind control thing. You are the same, just physically a little stronger and healthier with a longer lifespan. Why don't we see what's going on in the world? Aren't you curious about how this whole thing is being covered by the news?"
"I haven't had much time to think of it. Finding out you're alive and the whole alien thing has kept my mind busy."
"Yeah, I guess it's a lot to take in."
Tara ordered the communications system to scan for all news about Jax Teller or the Sons of Anarchy MC.
Screens descended from the ceiling, displaying various angles of Jax's last known position. There were two police helicopters and four news helicopters reporting on the manhunt for Jax Teller. They were searching his last known position.
No news reporter could explain how Jax Teller vanished. He was inches away from plowing head-on into a semi and then, without any time lapse, his bike just appeared on the shoulder of the freeway, his helmet hanging from the handlebars. He vanished into thin air.
There were also stories of what had occurred prior to his fleeing. The reports all said that he went on a bloody rampage killing his mother, a retired police chief who was a long-time family friend and two business associates. Jax's mug shots were shown and the public was cautioned that he was armed and extremely dangerous. There was even a $50,000 reward and the FBI added him to their ten most wanted list.
"They make me sound like some crazed animal. I hope Wendy isn't letting Abel watch this," Jax said.
"This will go down as the biggest most mysterious disappearance in history. They can't figure out how you got away. They are trying to say there was some kind of glitch and there's a missing piece of video, but that doesn't explain how the glitch occurred to every single person recording the incident."
The video was rerun in slow motion, but the reporters could provide no explanation for what happened to Jax Teller.
Two news helicopters narrowly missed colliding. One was forced to set down hard on the freeway. It was closed in both directions while law enforcement combed every inch for a trace of Jax Teller.
"The commuters are going to hate you. That's going to be nightmare of a commute."
"SAMCRO will hate me too for not killing myself."
"Fork SAMCRO. Jury deserved to die. You killed him in self-defense. You should have fought that charge."
"It didn't make a difference. By that time, I knew I was going to end things. That's why I didn't bother."
"Your "brothers" should have refused to let you do it. They should have stood up for you. They threw you away. You were a good little soldier right up to the end though, killing enemies of SAMCRO before you tried to kill yourself. How do you think your kids are going to take this news? Abel's too young to fully understand, but in a few years, he'll be able to find any information he wants on you."
"I told Nero that I wanted him to tell my kids that I was a criminal and they shouldn't grow up wanting to be like me."
"When I heard you tell Nero that you weren't a good man, it kind of broke my heart."
"How the hell do you know everything I did?"
"Your cut was bugged. They've been listening to your life for years. I took the bug out of your cut and destroyed it while you were in the shower."
"First or second time?"
Tara smiled.
"First."
"When I was trying to seduce you into having sex with me."
Tara laughed.
"Yes, I could practically read your mind. You thought you would take a shower and I would immediately agree to have sex with you."
"It's worked before," Jax said sounding a little wounded.
"That's true. You don't really put much effort into seducing a woman. Women come too easily to you."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he said with a smile.
"It is. Your mother raised you to have sex without feelings because she wanted you to love only her. That's why she hated Wendy and me. She might have to share you and she didn't want to do that."
Tara finished wiping the cream from his right arm, leaving his arm bare of all tattoos. She grabbed the cotton swab and began painting the cream on his left arm.
"I knew Gemma was different, but I thought I could handle her. I didn't see her as truly evil until I realized she killed you and blamed it on the Chinese. She knew it would set me on fire and lead me down a dangerous, bloody path. All she cared about was getting away with killing you. If she had told me that she heard that you had made a deal and I was going away for the rest of my life, I could see her killing you in a fit of anger. I could have eventually forgiven her for it. If she had only told me the truth."
"Gemma's a coward when it comes to telling the truth," Tara said. "Between Juice and Gemma, any plan they came up with was going to be bad. They weren't smart enough to realize they didn't need to come up with a story. Gemma and Juice just needed to leave."
"Juice killed Roosevelt to protect Gemma."
"I know. Roosevelt was a decent, honest guy. He didn't deserve to lose his wife and his life to SAMCRO. If they wanted to make up a story, Juice should have just said he saw a couple of guys run to a van with a satanic bumper sticker. He could have written some pro satanic sayings in my blood on the wall. It's California. You can always sell the idea that it was a satanic cult. I was the target because those type of killings are random. Roosevelt was killed when he walked in. That's why he was shot."
"I don't think satanic cults use meat forks to kill with," Jax said.
"There's always a first time. My mother used to always tell me that I had a hard head because she thought I was stubborn. When Gemma was stabbing me, I kept thinking about it. I guess even a hard headed person can't take a fork to the head," Tara said and she giggled. "Fork you, fork me, fork the whole world or just fork off. Who needs guns?"
Jax laughed. The way she said it made the whole situation seem so ridiculous.
"Remember the Monty Python where John Cleese was teaching self-defense against fruit? Just before everything went white, I thought I should have taken a class on self-defense against meat forks. It was such a strange thing to think before dying."
"Did you feel it when I took you in my arms when I found you?"
"No. I remember falling. I don't remember hitting the floor. After Meg, Ryland and some of the others I don't know by name took me out of the coroner's van, I was hidden in the SUV and Ryland and Meg drove me here. Ry put me in a bed downstairs. You haven't seen the lower floor yet. It has medical facilities and a gym and bunks for a small group. He dimmed the lights and he stayed with me until I woke up. He didn't want me to wake up alone. He said it took about eight hours."
"So thoughtful," Jax said with a sarcastic edge to his voice.
"Do you want me to finish?" Tara asked as the wiped the last of the removal cream from Jax's left arm. "The only one left is the Abel tattoo on your chest."
Jax nodded.
"I just want to get it over with."
"Ry has a technique to remove scars. It will only take a couple of minutes. He'll be here tomorrow."
In order for Tara to remove the Abel tattoo, she had to sit so close to Jax, she was practically in his lap.
"I can hardly wait."
"He's a great guy."
"I don't have to like him, do I?"
"No. Am I detecting a bit of jealousy?"
"I'm never jealous."
"Because you are Jax Teller and no woman can resist you."
"You've done a pretty good job resisting me so far today."
"It hasn't been that difficult."
Tara wiped the last of the tattoo removal cream from his chest and stood up.
"It's all done. You are now tattoo free."
"Old Tara never could resist me," Jax said.
"Old Tara faked it—a lot."
"Now you're just being cruel."
Tara grinned.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard. He had missed her so much and he was so close to having her back. If he could just have sex with her, he knew that would show her that she was still in love with him.
"You know you want to give in," Jax whispered in her ear.
"Torturing you is more fun."
"More fun than a long leisurely session of lovemaking?"
"You call five minutes leisurely?" she asked him with a taunting grin.
"OK. That's it," Jax said. He released her and stepped back. He decided to take a different approach to getting Tara to have sex with him; reverse psychology. "I wouldn't have sex with you even if you begged." Let her think about that.
"You might want to take another shower to make sure all the cream is gone."
Here it was, Jax thought. Tara was starting to come around. He knew she wouldn't be able to resist him for long. She wanted him to take another sexy shower, so she could check him out again.
"Just one problem. How am I going to wash my back? I might require medical assistance."
"All you have to say is wash me and the shower turns into a human car wash. It will scrub you clean."
"You know, Tara, you're not as much fun as you used to be."
"I'm going to bed. If you want to watch TV in your room, just say "screen on" and a screen will appear in the wall opposite your bed. Tell it what you want to watch or say menu and you'll see what's available to watch."
Tara waited until Jax was in the shower before putting the note on his bed. She smiled, picturing the expression on his face.
Jax got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He looked at the note on his bed.
The note read:
I know how you hate to sleep alone, so I left you a present under your bed.
Tara
Jax pulled out a bright pink box from underneath his bed and opened it. Inside was a blow-up sex doll made to resemble Ima.
After Georgie Caruso was murdered by SAMCRO, Ima went ahead with her line of sex dolls. She planned to start at the low end of the market making blow-up dolls and to use the profits to launch her upscale anatomically correct line of high-end sex dolls.
Jax went to Tara's room. She was sitting cross legged on her bed.
"Not funny, Tara. Not funny at all."
"Good night, Jax," she said with a smile.
The door shut automatically leaving Jax looking outraged and feeling sexually frustrated. He returned to his room to plot out how he was going to seduce Tara and, if he had time, he'd think about his future.