Chapter Text
Our story goes real Choose Your Adventure Gen X AU starting now so prepare to really suspend your disbelief and be on the lookout for Easter eggs and plot holes.
“From the west to the east I have flown to be near you. I have come all this way to be close, to be here with you. And now, all my heart I will lay down precisely at your feet. I have come all this way to be close, to be here with you. And now, all my heart I will lay down precisely at your feet.”
The day Tara decided to return to Charming was the day she learned of her father’s death. The years of alcohol and grief finally had short-circuited the electrical impulses in his heart. Bundle Branch blocks, alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy, and heart failure finally ended his grief.
She never stopped talking to her dad after she left Charming. He was a good father and loved her dearly. When Kohn started stalking her, she wanted to tell him but was terrified that his Irish temper and Fenian connections would come out of the woodwork. Her father would rain hell down on anyone who hurt his daughter.
He would call in the entire army and that would be a disaster. They weren’t supposed to exist after the Good Friday Agreement. Telling her father would be a disaster for everyone on an international scale.
Even better no one, not even Clay, knew that he had helped JT hook up with the Irish and he had tried to help get him out the deal with no bloodshed but Clay and Gemma got wind of JT’s end of the plans and took out JT.
They still never knew Old Man Knowles was ever involved. Even if they did find out, they would have learned real quick who was an actual King and who was a sad usurper.
No one knew that she was now the last of the Fenian Knowles. The Irish are all about lineage and legacy and she was now the closest thing they had to their own royalty. They would never hurt her. In fact, Cameron Hayes’ unwise decision to tie her up and run off with Abel inadvertently signed his death warrant the minute he laid hands on Tara.
Besides the real threat to Tara were the Russians and the Irish would protect her at all costs, no matter who was after her.
Tara’s mother’s family had fled the Soviet Union after Stalin decided to starve the Ukrainians into submission in the 1930’s. Thousands starved or were rounded up and shipped off to the Gulag archipelago. Her family were all Ukrainian dissidents from an old line of White Russian supporters dating back to the Great War. They had barely escaped that slaughter but there was still a bounty on any surviving family and Tara was the last of her mother’s family.
They wouldn’t hurt her either. The terms of the bounty dated back to the 30’s and hinged on bringing any female survivors back alive. The women of that family were known to be beautiful and if there was one thing Russians valued it was true feminine beauty. She would live like a princess trapped in a tower and break the last cycle of a classic Slavic generational curse started long before she was ever a gleam in the eyes of her mother.
They tracked her to Charming right when Abel was kidnapped by the idiot Irishman Hayes. They knew that was not the time to collect their bounty. The Fenians found out about the bounty and knew right then and there they had to go to any lengths to protect her. She could not be taken anywhere but Charming, or if absolutely necessary, Ireland.
Tara made sure that no one knew about any of these bizarre parts of her life. Her life was like a weird fairy tale meets le Carre novel. Even Kohn couldn’t dig that up. He was singularly obsessed with just keeping her and Teller apart and for himself.
With all of this in mind, she packed her bags when she received the news of her dad’s death and called his cousin to come get her.
The princess was returning to Charming.
Tara didn’t tell Donna she was back until she showed up on her doorstep one hour after she arrived. Donna almost passed out when she answered the door. When Tara walked into the house, the last person she expected to meet was Jackson Teller’s WIFE. She looked every bit the rode hard and put away wet Croweater you would expect and that Donna dragged Tara into her bedroom to tell her all about.
Donna went into Tiny Beast mode. “Holy shit girl, I am so happy you are back but you should have called and told me you were coming back you crazy bitch!” Apparently, Wendy was over at Donna’s to get Old Lady lessons if she could stay off the crank now that she was pregnant. Gemma refused any more enrollment Old Lady Finishing School after her last crank binge right before she managed to get knocked up with the Prince of Charming’s heir apparent.
According to Donna, Jax had filed for divorce but got horny one night when the clubhouse Croweaters were on a girl’s trip to Vegas to recruit a fresh batch to bring back to Charming. So he ended up hammered at his house where Wendy was staying. One thing led to another and all hell broke loose when he called out She Who Must Not Be Named’s name at the climax.
With this in mind, when Wendy realized the actual Tara was back, she knew she was fucked when she laid eyes on her. She was too beautiful to be true; silken black hair, almond eyes, and porcelain skin. This bitch had the market cornered on natural beauty.
Wendy high-tailed it out of Donna’s and headed straight for Gemma’s. "Jesus Christ, Gem, you expect me to compete with that?" Within the hour, Gemma, everyone at the clubhouse, and Old Mother Hubbard and the Peyton Place Prayer group found out Tara had landed. Gemma was trying to figure out how to not tell Jax and actually thought it was a good idea to go to Donna’s.
Gemma regretted that decision almost on arrival. Tara was the spitting image of Taisia and the same age as she was when she came to Charming with Dave Knowles. It should be against the laws of nature for her to be even more beautiful than Taisia still. Regardless, here was the harpy live and in person upending those laws. She was also now sticking a huge thorn in the side of her carefully crafted kingdom.
It had taken all of the last ten years to get Jax into a good head space after Tara left for college. The night she left began an endless cycle of weed, booze, and pussy. Jax somehow managed to bag almost the entire state of California, parts of Nevada, and down into Mexico in his quest for the gold medal in the Man-Whore Olympics. He was just now finally getting his shit together.
He was also now the VP of the mother charter, all callous, cocky, and primed to be the Prince. He was no longer the lovesick puppy that the harpy had left behind, crushed and broken. Gemma cleaned up that mess once and she would be damned if she ever let that happen again.
Everyone knew that Dave Knowles had died. Gemma tried to arrange it so that Tara wouldn’t come to Charming but like always, Tara was two steps ahead of her and arrived in town less than 24 hours after she received the news. Everything was pre-arranged to begin with, so all Tara had to do was call the priest and set up the wake and funeral mass.
Tara also had been working on transferring to Saint Thomas from Chicago Presbyterian when Kohn started the stalking. It was also obvious that the law was not on her side when it took her three precincts to get a restraining order and knew she had to get back to the one place she would be safe on at least two fronts.
She had a house ready to go. It needed some decluttering and remodeling but that was manageable. The minute the Club left for Ireland, her dad’s high-end contractor cousin was called in remodel the house to protect Tara, especially now that she was pregnant.
That baby boy would prove important in the scope of lineage when shit with the Irish would go off the rails with Galen and Clay down the yellow brick road. But we digress. No expense was spared. It definitely proved its worth when Gemma’s crazy ass showed up trying to bully Tara. That doorbell camera came in real handy when Gemma tried to lie her way out of it.
Jax found out that Tara was back when he drove by Tara’s and saw the Cutlass in the driveway and a very familiar flash of silken black hair as the front door closed.
He almost had a heart attack.
He had driven by her house once a day for the last ten years. It helped him cope just to make sure it wasn’t being sold. If the house was sold it would forever kill his hope that she would come home.
The last he had heard about Tara was that she was in Chicago and had become a surgeon. He was so damn happy that at least she had achieved her dreams, even if she had landed a million miles away. He had to bury the thought of what might have been if he had actually left with her every single night with the weed, booze, and pussy.
It never worked. Hundreds of women and a few stints of jail with some felonies attached later, all he had achieved was a rap sheet, a pickled liver, and a sore dick that he at least made sure to wrap. No one but Tara could have his babies.
The plan was solid until that one night with Wendy. He had met her at the clubhouse during a party with the Vegas chapter. She was a sweet butt stripper that tagged along with the Vegas chapter for a patch-over party. She clocked Jax the minute she walked in the door and they became quick drinking and eventually fuck buddies.
On a trip back to Vegas a year later he was trashed when they thought it would be fun to get married. He was lonely and by the eight year mark he had given up hope that She Who Must Not Be Named would ever return.
There were rules around talking about her. Everyone with half a brain knew not to say her name. Wendy had fucked around and found out when she tried pushing that button after Gemma told her to test the waters. Gemma wanted grandbabies and while she knew Wendy wasn’t the ideal Old Lady, she was probably the closest she would ever get to an incubator for her grandbabies.
That incident triggered the crank binge that killed their marriage. Jax knew she was using but didn’t care enough to even want to help her. He filed for divorce the day after the incident.
His dumb ass was nice enough to let her stay at the house he bought right before they got married. The Croweaters were out of town and he was horny so he stopped by the house and found a very willing Wendy.
The condom busted and he freaked out. The next day he got a morning after pill through a friend and watched Wendy take it. What he didn’t know was that she went to the bathroom and upchucked it right back up and flushed it down the toilet.
When she tried to tell him that she was pregnant a few weeks later he very calmly told her that he had already filed for divorce. He would have a paternity test and even if it was his, they were done. He would support his child but they were over.
When Tara returned he was a couple of months away from the divorce being final so he would try and wait until the finalization and he knew she was back for good. He would then find her that very day and propose to her with the ring he still had from the day she left for college.
If she was married or with anyone else, he would take care of that because she was ever only his. He would then he would throw her over his shoulder and run off to their happily ever after.
All of those plans went to hell the day Wendy OD’d while pregnant and Tara helped save his baby. The first time he finally laid eyes on her was when she was coming out of the hospital room to talk to him about Wendy. He was with his mom and the club after his mom found her in a pool of blood in his house.
It took all of his willpower not to throw her over his shoulders and lock her away so she could never leave again. They talked about Abel and he left to deal with the Nords who sold the crank to his pregnant ex-wife but for the first the time in ten years he had a feeling that he thought had died when she left for college.
He tested the waters when he told her that she didn’t have to do this, that she had other patients to care for. When she told him that she asked to assist with Abel’s case, he finally had the feeling that he thought had died the day she left Charming without him.
He had hope.