"You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in..." - Nick Hornby
I had thought about how I would die before. I imagined I would go peaceful, in my sleep. Isn't that what everyone thinks? No one expects to be murdered in cold blood or deteriorate in a hospital bed from a disease. There's no way to prepare for something like that. Society sells an image of old age; sitting in a rocking chair, old and gray, watching your grandchildren run around the back yard. That isn't realistic for everyone. People tell each other to look both ways when crossing the road. Don't drink alcohol, your liver will shut down. Don't smoke cigarettes, you'll get lung cancer. If you do drugs, you're signing your own death certificate, right? There's preventive steps you can follow to live a long and healthy life. Bullshit. There's nothing you can do. You're going to die and only fate can decide how. That's a scary thought. People don't want to hear that you can be the healthiest, most cautious person and still get hit by a speeding car on your Sunday walk to church. The ambulance arrived late and you flatline on the way to the hospital.
I didn't want to die, but I wasn't afraid to. Death is a part of life. It's inevitable.
"What about you?" I asked, shaking my head.
"Just go, I'll be fine. I'm going to cover you. Run and don't look back. Do you understand?" I shook my head, refusing. "GO!" He yelled at me.
He stood up and fired at them. I crawled over the bartender, making my way to the end of the counter, where I would sprint for the door. Broken glass covered the floor and I could feel it piercing through my jeans and digging into the palms of my hands.
That's the funny thing about adrenaline. It has a way of taking the pain away. When your heart is beating out of your chest you don't really have time to acknowledge something as trivial as a little bit of blood and sweat. You endure it.
I came to the end of the bar, where I stood up, still ducking my head behind the safety of the counter. I peaked up to see the men who were shooting at us. They appeared to be Mexican, wearing kuttes that spelled out Mayan. They had flipped tables over to provide protection and were positioned behind them. I counted three men, but from the sound of the gunshots there was definitely more than that. There was bodies sprawled all over the place. I heard the cry of pain as I turned to see Bobby clutching his arm. He fell backwards from the impact. Jax looked at him worried, before screaming, "NOW," urging me to run.
I sprinted for the door but stopped in shock when the emergency exit was kicked in. Four men, two of which I recognized as Opie and Juice, rushed in with assault rifles. The entrance was also infiltrated and soon enough the entire bar was filled with Son's of Anarchy patches. I backed myself into a corner and watched.
They had completely surrounded the shooters. I could now see six Mayan's. They had stopped shooting, accepting defeat. The white-haired man gunned five of them down, perfect head shots with his pistol. The last man dropped his weapon and threw his hands in the air. Jax jogged over to him and began punching him.
"Enough," the white-haired man told him. He must be in charge. Clay? I thought, remembering what Jax had said to me hours earlier. I tried putting the pieces together. Nothing made sense. Jax had said the club was just men who rode bikes and watched each other's backs. I couldn't separate fact from fiction. My mind had yet to grasp the reality of the situation. I was waiting for a camera crew to pop out of no where, tell me they were filming and this was all some huge prank. I knew that wasn't going to happen. My hands were still shaking visibly.
"Why did you do this," Jax yelled at the man. "Who sent you!" He didn't reply. Jax kicked him in his stomach, pulling out his gun and blowing his brains all over the floor. "Check his ink, this is a flash-patch. This ain't Mayan."
I could feel my stomach tighten as my mouth began to water. I walked toward the door, barely making it outside before vomiting all over the ground. I leaned my back against the side of the building. My legs were becoming too weak to hold my weight. I sunk down to the ground, bringing my bloody knees up to my chin and wrapping my arms around them. I must be in shock because any normal person would have high-tailed it out of there as soon as the opportunity arose. I was exhausted. I couldn't move right now if someone was literally chasing me. The men began filing out of the bar. If I was lucky, they wouldn't even notice me. I never did have a whole lot of luck though.
"Me and Opie will take care of it." I heard Jax say to who I assumed was Clay. I could feel eyes on me but I didn't bother to look at any of them. These men were dangerous. I had no idea who they were or what fucked up shit they were involved with. I had a sick feeling that this was just a normal night for them. No one sounded the least bit surprised or worried. "Give me a minute," he said to the others. I heard his footsteps approaching me. I still had my face buried into my knees.
"I know you're scared and confused. You probably want nothing to do with me. Listen, I never meant for you to go through that shit. I never wanted to put you in harm's way." He sighed. "I don't expect you to understand. Please just say something, anything."
"I don't know who you are, who you really are." I said, looking up to him.
"I'm the same guy you were with hours earlier."
"No, you're not."
He leaned down to where I was sitting and placed his hand on my leg. "Nichole-"
"Don't. Please, don't touch me." I jerked his hand off of me. "I can't. Not now." I said, shaking my head.
Jax stood up, calling for Juice. The olive-skinned man who had introduced himself to me in the club house the other day strutted over. "Take her back to the club. Charming's not safe until we find the guys who are behind this and deal with it. It's on lockdown until then." Juice nodded and Jax walked away.
He stood there for a few minutes, watching me. "You coming?" He asked. No, I thought. "You know, most people would've lost it had they been in your shoes today. I think you're holding up well."
"You think I'm holding up well?" I asked him incredulously. "Why are you not panicking? Why isn't any one calling the police? There was just a shoot-out. There are people dead inside." He shifted his weight onto his other foot, shoving his hands in his pockets; noticeably uncomfortable. "People with families and friends and children. This is a tragedy. Why am I the only one here who comprehends that?"
"We understand what's happened. We make it a priority to keep the streets of Charming safe. What happened tonight is what we fight to prevent. It was completely out of our hands. This is a big deal to us, but you have to understand that getting upset doesn't solve anything. Not right now. You can't be sad and overcome with emotion and be proactive at the same time."
"Being proactive would be alerting the authorities." I cut in.
"No, the police are as useful as any random Joe on the street. Society just uses them as a security blanket to make the people feel safe. In reality, we have a better chance taking down the guys who did this than they would."
"What makes you any better than them?" I questioned him.
"We're not cold-blooded murderers. We fight only to keep our people safe; only when we have no other choice. It's basic survival. Kill or be killed. It's as simple as that. Life isn't fairy tales and happy endings or shit like that. You see what you want to see until you're forced to see it for what it really is."
"What are you even saying?"
"I'm saying that looking at life through rose-colored glasses is nice and all, but it isn't realistic. We're not monsters. We're just people who dug a little deeper and decided not to be contained by social order. We choose not to be swayed by what the government feeds us, of what's deemed right or wrong and we're looked down on for it." He sat down next to me. "But mostly, we're brothers; one big family. We ride together and we die together... We fight to keep what's rightfully our's."
"And what's that?"
"Freedom." He said.
I took in what he had said. I didn't know if had made sense to me. Nothing about today had made sense. All I could picture in my head was the look on Jax's face as he stuck the gun to that man's head and pulled the trigger. Kill or be killed, Juice's words danced through my mind.
"I'm tired." I told him, feeling the weight of my eyelids becoming too heavy to hold up.
"Let's go," he said.
"I can't."
I felt two strong arms wrap around me and lift me up as I drifted to sleep.
I woke up in a panic. My heart was racing and sweat trickled down my face. The previous event's of the night managed to haunt me even in my dreams. I noticed the familiar walls of Jax's bedroom in the club house. He had fallen asleep on the couch across from me. My purse was sitting on the night stand. Someone must have grabbed it from the bar. I reached inside for my cellphone. 9:46 a.m., it read.
I walked into his bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror. The dried blood on my skin was flaking off. I turned the faucet on and splashed water on my face, washing it off. The cut on my forehead didn't seem so bad. My palms were black and blue and slightly swelled and it hurt to bend my knees when I walked. The wounds were seemingly superficial and would heal in a few days. I remembered Bobby, who had been shot, and wondered how he was holding up. I shook the thought away, considering that I should be afraid of these people instead of worrying about them. Leaving the bathroom, I tip-toed over to grab my bag, careful not to wake Jax up and headed for his door.
I walked down the hallway, taking in all of the voices I heard. There were people everywhere. Pleasant chit-chat filled the building as if some huge family reunion was being held. They must all be in the bar room. I crossed my arms over my chest.
"There's coffee in here." A voice had said behind me. I turned to face the older woman from Unser's funeral. She was standing in a doorway, her fist resting on her hip. She gave me a cold stare. "I'm Gemma."
"No, thank you. I'm going to head out." I told the woman.
"Really," she said, eyeing me up and down, "I insist." She turned into what I assumed was the kitchen. "Club's locked down anyways. You won't get very far."
"What do you mean it's locked down?" I questioned her, following her into the room.
"Have a seat," she ordered. "How do you like your coffee?"
"I don't want any coffee."
"Your uncle drank it black." She ignored me and filled up a glass, sliding it over.
"What do you mean the club is locked down?" I repeated myself.
"It means that all family member's of the club are supposed to stay here until whatever's going on blows over."
"I'm not family," I told her. "So, what? You're holding me hostage?"
"Who ever ordered the hit last night could already know who you are. It's safe here."
My attention was captured by a little television sitting on the counter. It was the news. I had heard a reporter mention the town of Charming and became fixated. A young man standing in front of ruins had identified the area as the location of the tiny bar I was drinking at yesterday. All that was left was the scattered remains of it. He stated there had been a gas leak causing the entire place to catch fire. A fire marshal walked into the screen and the man began interviewing him.
"At about 5:30 this morning," he told the reporter, "we had received a call from a couple passing by. They told us there was a fire which was spreading to the woods. Had we never gotten the call this could have turned into a mass forest fire because it's off-the-grid. There's no houses or other businesses within a mile of it."
"Were there any casualties?" The reporter asked him.
"Several. It's hard to tell how many exactly at the moment because of the severity of the damage the fire caused but we should know within the next couple of days."
It made sense to me now, remembering Jax telling Clay that he and Opie would handle the situation. They blew the place up; staged an accident. Smart, I thought, immediately chastising myself for thinking anything positive about what had happened.
"And I'm a liability, right?" I turned to look at her. "Why don't just say what you want to say? I know too much. I've seen too much."
"My son seems to think otherwise." She stated.
"Your son?"
"Jackson. That's my boy." She told me, lighting up a cigarette.
"There's nothing going on with me and Jax. I hardly know him, obviously." I said, referring to his lifestyle I had recently learned about.
"You don't have to know everything about someone to want to be with them." She told me. "You just know how they make you feel and that you never want them to make anyone else feel the same way. The rest comes with time." She took a drag of her smoke. "You fall in love with the man. And you learn to love the club along the way."
A/N: Please review if you liked the chapter. I'll update again in a day or so when I get some feedback. I'm going to focus on character development throughout the story, so if you feel like don't know enough about them yet, it will definitely come soon. This story is going to revolve around some of the tv series related drama as well as made up situations.