Chapter Text
“You and me girl got a highway to the sky. We can turn away from the night and day and the tears we had to cry. You're my life. I can see a new tomorrow. Everything we are will never die.”
Tara woke up in a tangle of sheets. The room was dark, and she was alone. All she could think was that she finally had the most wonderful dream last night. It was the first time in her dreams in over two years that she was able to make it out of the pit Kohn had trapped her in.
Jax was finally able to her rescue and she was finally able to tell, and show, him how much she still loved him. She felt so peaceful for the first time in forever. It was when she moved to get out of bed that she realized something was off. Her entire lower body was sore in a way she hadn’t felt since the night she left Jax fifteen years ago. They had made love and she waited until he fell asleep to leave.
She left a note and that was the last she saw of him until last night at Scoops. She was still disoriented from sleeping so heavy with the wild sex dreams too. All she knew was that she needed to get up and shower.
She reached for her bedside lamp and that’s when she realized she wasn’t in her bed. She panicked and stumbled until she found the light switch on the wall. Holy shit, she really was in Jax’s room. He wasn’t there and the door was locked from the outside.
She then realized they really did make love last night. Now she remembered the snapping of his hips and their intense kisses. She was so overwhelmed at one point she had to beg him to let her breathe. He laughed and eased up for a few strokes. He couldn’t resist holding her face through with his hand just so that he could look her straight in the eyes.
He told her he had to because her face was all he had dreamed of for the last fifteen years; now that he was actually making love to her again, he would never stop looking at her face. That was the moment she came and was so exhausted that she blissed out before he could say a word.
There was no note, so Tara decided to do some more yoga and take another shower. As she stepped out of the shower she remembered all of the times they made love there as teenagers. They were supposed to be studying and Jax would always say that her anatomy was his best subject.
As she dried her hair, she wrapped the towel around her hair and body. When she walked out the door, she caught a flash of silver string from his closet that was slightly opened. As she walked over to closet, she realized it was her guitar. She had left it behind the night she left in a hurry.
She had replaced it when she got to San Diego, but it was never the same. Bobby always tuned her guitars and she swore she never did tune as well as he did. She stopped playing after Josh started the stalking. She was trying to hide by moving around and always afraid he would hear her playing as a dead giveaway. A sudden impulse took over and she grabbed the guitar.
She loved heavy metal, but the song she always held closest was one her mother would sing to her at bedtime, Too Much Heaven. Her dad would ask her to play it once a year around one of his benders. She only played it for him or by herself. Only Bobby knew she played it because he helped her learn it after her mom died.
She had no idea where Jax was at or when he would be back so she settled in. She knew from experience that shit was deep if they were on lockdown and trusted that he was keeping her safe back in his room. She wasn’t going to even ask the why again.
She dressed quickly and sat down with the guitar. It was still tuned perfectly. Either Bobby had been in here, or Jax’s room was a magical time capsule where nothing ages, wears out, or gives up. Her mother always told her this but maybe love does bear all things, believe all things, hopes all things, and absolutely endures all things.
She made it through the nightmare of Kohn and back to Charming, She woke up in the last room she went to sleep in before she left charming all those years ago. Maybe this was proof of the true nature of their love. There was the reality of his life though. She had no idea if they were still gun running. Did an ice cream parlor really pay the bills? She found that highly unlikely based on how the clubhouse was so much bigger and the entire compound was so expansive was when she arrived.
She left because of the danger, the threat of violence, the very real threat of death that Gemma had dropped on her the night she left. She was going to have to face that heroines trial but if she survived Kohn, Gemma wouldn’t be easy but at least she was prepared.
She wasn’t a scared nineteen year old girl anymore. She had been through so much and had seen and survived too much shit to be scared anymore. She cleared her head and started singing the song the way she remembered her mother singing it to her.
Jax was leaving church and as he walked down the hall to his dorm he heard the guitar and her voice. It hit him like the bullet on the chain he wore. She was singing her mom’s song. Bobby had told him about the song shortly after she left.
They were in his room and pulling some guns from the closet because word was ATF was going to raid the clubhouse. Bobby pulled the guitar from the back of the closet and the sight of it knocked Jax breathless. All he could see and hear was her face and voice. He had to sit down. He had shoved it to the very back of the closet after she left. He couldn’t bring himself to give it to Bobby.
On his worst drunken nights he would take it out because even over a decade later it still had her perfume, Sunflowers, on it. He would always put it as far back as possible when he was sober because on some of those drunk nights the pain and rage made him want to destroy it.
Now he heard her singing her mom’s song for the first time ever. As he opened the door, he saw her with her hair down, looking at the guitar and he was sixteen again. She looked exactly the same. She didn’t hear him coming in and kept singing. He couldn’t move. Then she saw him and abruptly put the guitar down like she’d been caught stealing it.
“I’m sorry! I saw it when I got out of the shower and couldn’t resist.” He was just still thrilled to see her there. When he woke up that morning he knew the night before was real but he still expected to return to the room and find her gone; it had all been a figment of his imagination like every morning for the last fifteen years had been.
Except it wasn’t a dream, he sat down, “It’s your guitar, you don’t have to ask permission.” So she smiled and sang the song. He couldn’t stop looking at her. She was so caught up in the song that she didn’t realize its effect until she finished, looked up, and felt him kissing her. She reached for his face and they laid down again, kissing.
“Jax, I am so sore I don’t think I could do anything right now.” He laughed, “That’s ok, we have all night, every night, from now on.” She kissed him and laughed, “I can’t stay here forever. I have a job to start in a few weeks and a home to remodel.”
Jax looked at her, “I’ll make sure your house is taken care of and the lockdown is at least a week. That gives us plenty of time to make up for lost time.”
Tara laughed, “Are you a king now? Am I a princess being guarded in your castle? What do you do now? We barely know each other anymore. I have so many questions. I won’t ask what’s going on until you’re ready, but I would like to at least leave the room for some food and see Bobby. Maybe the rest of the guys too?”
Jax knew it was either none or full disclosure or he was going to have to tell her about the Irish, the Russians, the porn, and the pussy. She was never a judgmental person but she seemed so refined now. Placing her in a room full of bikers, pimps, porn stars, and whores was a comical tragedy waiting to happen.
Tara stopped following anything related to SAMCRO when the stalking started. She knew Kohn had access to all kinds of records so she bought burner phones and stayed off the internet. She only followed the national news enough to know that California was still part of the United States, but avoided anything local for fear the access the government gave him would tip him off where she was at.
When he was finally caught and the government realized the extent of his stalking and the damage it had done not just to her, they made sure he went away for a long time. She suspected his shivving wasn’t coincidental but took the settlement offered by the feds and ran back to Charming with the assurance that they would watch her back from that point on.
It was on this note that Jax led her out into the clubhouse holding hands. It was exactly the same but bigger and cleaner. She had to laugh when she saw the stripper pole, and the room was packed with families. They all wanted to to see the famed lost love and prodigal princess; it turned into a huge reunion as all the guys she remembered came and hugged her.
The women were unsurprisingly less enthusiastic. Most were just curious but the herd of porn stars and whores were almost visibly hostile. They knew better than to piss of their boss though, but now that THE Tara was back they knew their days of pushing up on the Prince were numbered, if not already gone based on his mood this morning that apparently hadn’t been seen in decades.
“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
When Jax introduced Tara as his Old Lady, it wasn’t surprising but Gemma knew this was the puppy love in her son. Like father, like son. The other family flaw. She was not going to meddle but she knew Tara was not aware of the porn, pussy, and side hustling. The Tara she remembered was a sweet girl who thrived on Gemma’s maternal affection and once that affection turned to antipathy, she was weakened.
So Gemma did what Gemma did best. She underestimated Tara, and how much she had changed. That fatal flaw would plant a seed that would relegate her even further down the line and end up bringing Jax and Tara together in a way that would change Charming and California forever.