Chapter Text
“They grew and grew up the old church wall ‘till they could grow no higher and at the top twined a lover’s knot. The red rose and the briar.”
Even before the initial psych evaluation, Tara knew she needed to get away from Jax. This wasn’t some kind of epiphany. She needed to get as far away as possible as soon as possible. She should have left when he went to Ireland. If she had, she would have Thomas, the use of her hand, and her dignity.
When they were teenagers his possessiveness was endearing. Now it was suffocating. She knew she had daddy issues even then. The affection Jax had for her was real, and even at its worst wasn’t as bad as dealing with her father. He acted like she didn’t exist except to cook meals and keep the house clean when he got home from whatever bar he spent the day at.
Now it’s Jax doing the same, except he spends his days at the whorehouse as she sits at home raising the boys while looking at her dead hand, praying he comes home alive and throws her any ounce of affection. She hadn’t seen the look that Jax had on his face while the whore was riding his dick glanced in her general direction in months.
Now she was just trapped but was also tired of running away. Why can’t she live in Charming? Probably because she would never have a life away from Jax. Once she popped out his baby, it was tantamount to ownership in his world. Then she married him, believing this was the fairy tale come true. In a brothel, but at least she had her Prince.
Until she didn’t.
She knew the minute he watched Roosevelt walk her out of their house in handcuffs without so much as a fight that their happily ever after was over. It had all been a carefully constructed trap orchestrated by his Machiavellian mother steering him towards Nero, towards the whore house, and away from her.
Because Gemma knew that if there was one thing Jax loved more than Tara, it was fresh pussy. She saw to that during the their ten years apart. She made sure it became his coping mechanism, so that she could steer him whichever way suited her and, by extension, the club best. Even if it was in the form of the dried up saddlebag she finally caught him with, nothing is better than old pussy but new pussy, right?
The psych evaluation hurt her chances of leaving but at this point she was resigned to her fate. She couldn’t leave her boys with Gemma while Jax played Pimp Daddy at the best little whorehouse in California. No, she would go home to the glass menagerie, and navigate the fucked up world she now knows how to live in.
She has to for the sake of her sons.
Patterson knew her case against Tara would fall apart in light of the psych evaluation. And without Otto to testify, thanks to her already sketchy connection to the psychopath Toric, there was no actual evidence she conspired with him in the first place. Any decent defense attorney would use that and frame it as a trapped woman in love with her gangster husband; driven by that love to use her credentials to help a club member deal with chronic medical issues.
She had already suffered the loss of the use of her hand, her livelihood, to the life she was trapped in by that husband and was only following his orders. Her desperately faked miscarriage was the final straw in trying to save her boys and escape a poisonous environment punctuated with lies, violence, and club-ordained infidelity.
Her case against Teller had hinged on him delivering the Irish and that was looking less likely by the minute when they were led on a wild goose chase that resulted in a warehouse with Clay Morrow and Galen O’Shay’s dead bodies and no evidence tying the Sons to either’s death directly.
She was literally forced to drop the hammer on two dead bodies while Teller walked, all thanks to his now medically, and more importantly, legally uncredible wife. The woman was afraid to go back home with him but she knew that she had no choice if she wanted to be with her boys.
She also knew that Tara needed the help and she’s glad she got it, but at what cost? She talked with Roosevelt and made sure they had eyes and ears on her for her own safety. The most dangerous time for a woman living in an abusive situation isn’t just when they are trying to leave, it’s also in the initial reunion phase. She wanted hands on Teller the second it looked like Tara might conveniently disappear, or accidentally fall off of a cliff.
She also had eyes on that psychopathic mother in law. Gemma’s attorney at least made her understand that even raising an eyebrow towards Tara would put her in a holding cell after the “went away or passed away” threat was confirmed as overheard by an anonymous source.
Rather than pushing for “her day in court” and any legal ploy to confront her accusers, Teller ordered his mother to take the deal and once and for all, “back the fuck off Tara.” Apparently, he at least valued her enough as the mother of his children to restore some validity to her role as mother, and not just an incubator for future MC royalty.
It was on this note that Tara returned home. She was under the watchful eye of Happy, or trusted prospects if his services were needed elsewhere. She knew if she didn’t toe the line, Happy wouldn’t hesitate to find ways to make her disappear that even Patterson and Roosevelt couldn’t tie to Teller.
Tara went into a dissociative state and played the role of motorcycle mafia wife and mother to the tee. Dinner was ready and waiting. Jax came home every night to his boys waiting and his wife bent to his will because she knew she would lose the boys if she didn’t bend.
She found some agency when her medical license was reinstated through some old school Tammany Hall tactics. Jax finally did something for her as a consolation prize for being married to the monster. He would never let her go again. He knew he was a shitbag but at least he had the one thing in the world that he actually loved in his own warped way.
He would do whatever he had to do to keep her as close as he could. He knew if she ran this time, he would have to hunt her down and she knew it too. He also knew his mother had actually threatened to kill the only woman he ever loved. He made sure Gemma paid dearly for that fuck around and find out moment. She was only allowed around the boys when he was in the room with them, which of course wasn’t very often.
Tara took that trade off because the less he was around meant the less Gemma was. She even got that baby girl he had hoped for.
He would whisper in her ear every time they made love though that only he loved her so much. It was a weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome love and she knew she really lived in a fucked up reality when this was the best sex they had ever had. Intense and unattached at the same time.
The legit pussy money at least allowed her to live exquisitely. She spent it making herself more beautiful than anyone could have imagined. No surgery or fillers needed. Just good old fashioned hit ‘em up style revenge spending. Even Jax was shocked at the transformation and worked twice as hard to keep her in whatever she wanted to spend that money on. It was her variation of the world’s oldest profession and her prize was at least good looking and great in bed.
Those rode hard whores held little appeal beyond a quick blow job when Jax knew he had the his own Helen of Troy waiting for him at home. She rarely left the house without him and he took a possessive pride in parading her out like a peacock when he did.
She was only ever his and now always would be.
They were their own white trash variation of the proverbial Goodfellas taking their wives to the dinner club one night, and their side pieces the next. This was the life she had signed up for when she chose to stay the day after Donna died. Poor Donna, at least she was definitely in a better place while Tara was in a purgatory of her own choosing.
Lullaby for a Soldier (Arms of the Angels)“May you always be brave in the shadows 'Til the sun shines upon you again. Hear this prayer in my heart, and we'll ne'er be apart. May you stay in the arms of the angels.”
Every night she gathered her babies and sang the lullaby she sang to Thomas the night Jax learned the truth about the miscarriage. Now she knew why the caged bird sang; when she would catch herself falling in love with him again, she would sing it to remind herself that she had her family even if she was in love with a monster.