Sons of Anarchy Fic: exit plans
exit plans
sons of anarchy ; tara, salazar (jax/tara) ; 2,000 words ; pg
survival is a rite of passage. she’s learned well with history. spoilers for bainne.
-
Her eyes are open.
Salazar’s palm sweats into Tara’s throat. “You’re making this easy,” he tells her calmly. His eyes are wet too. “Falling right into my lap like that,” he says. “This is what I wanted.”
Tara stares. The smell of blood still sticks to the skin underneath her nose. It’s a mix of hers and the girlfriend’s, and her fingers are split carelessly from the glass that cut the other woman’s throat. She isn’t reacting. She is just aware. And the scene before continues to replay in her head.
It was so easy, she thinks. Her arm was angled the right way, her hand and then her fingers; it was all about instinct and practice. Doctors make the best cuts. And when Salazar’s girlfriend looked up at her, dying, Tara knew how to look away too.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
Salazar’s fingers uncurl briefly into her throat, but then he pulls back. Her mouth shudders into gasping and when he yanks her up to her feet, she stumbles forward into him. He turns her too and her arm cracks as it twists into her back.
His mouth brushes over her ear. She feels him exhale and she squints, looking into desert. It’s for miles and miles, and the dust seems to rise and fall with the very same awareness that she has, there and then gone. Salazar lets her shuffle forward too and her knees hit the side of his car. He’s going to have to lose the car, she thinks.
“Scared?” he breathes then, and she feels his fingers slide back over her throat, down and over her breasts. The shirt pulls itself into his palm and she forces herself to keep her gaze straight. Her teeth sink into her lip.
But she doesn’t answer. It’s the first time she doesn’t think of Jax.
They come to a house. Salazar opens the back of the trunk and she stares up at him, wide-eyed and silent as he reaches for her.
His eyes are wide. “It ain’t easy, you know,” he tells her. “Being in this, walking around and taking orders from some - doesn’t matter, he’s dead. I would’ve been the best, the very best, and she, she would’ve been right there with me.”
He starts to untie her gag. His fingers are slick in her hair, pulling out pieces of the rag; it’s the girlfriend’s shirt, but Tara tries not to think about it. When the fabric falls to the floor, she swallows back.
It’s the knife that comes out of nowhere. “What are you doing?” she asks quietly, and the blade flicks open. It clicks into place loudly and he shakes his head, kneeling front of her.
“What are you doing?” she ask again. He cuts the ties around her legs. The knife goes back into his pocket.
“I don’t understand you,” Salazar says finally, and she looks up, around and at the garage that they’re in. The walls are bare and the car sits between rows of metal shelves. “I expected Teller’s old lady to be different.”
She doesn’t have time to laugh, and he drags her backwards, her feet skidding against the floor. She almost trips over herself too, as Salazar drags her to the stairs, and chooses to lean most of her weight into him. She bites her lip and keeps her gaze done.
Somehow, they make it inside. He pulls her into a hallway, empty too, and then into another room. Salazar pushes her into a chair and Tara manages to steady herself, her tied hands pressing into a table. She sit with shaky legs and lets them drop in front of her.
“There’s no place to go,” he says.
“Right,” she murmurs.
She watches as he pulls out the knife again. He opens the blade with his fingers, yanking it back into place. He studies it too, looking at the metal and half-watching her, waiting for her to give him some kind of reaction.
Don’t, she tells herself. Her head spins a little with memories, odd and misplaced; for a second, she’s back home and in the kitchen, and in another second, she’s back in her father’s house and there’s Josh, standing over her with that sick twist of a smile.
Salazar drops the knife into the sink. Tara jumps and catches the dark circles under his knife finally. There is still blood against his face, stained into his shirt, and she tries to remember his girlfriend’s name.
“Louisa,” he says, catching her. “It was Louisa.”
“I know,” she lies.
He eyes her carefully. “This isn’t about you, you know.”
“I know.”
“You know where he is.”
It’s a strange statement and she’s staring at Salazar, completely confused. Her mouth opens and then closes. Her eyes hurt.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice is calm. “It doesn’t matter if I know where he is or not because you don’t care.”
“I’m going to kill you,” he says. His mouth starts to curl, slowly, thoughtful, and he leans back into the counter. He doesn’t pick up the knife and she can’t look away; it might be his eyes, the way they stay open and wide, the blood that sort of just hangs off his skin, and it might just be because she’s almost scared and it’s not just her here.
Tara looks away. “I know,” she says.
Salazar keeps her in a bathroom. He tosses her a shirt and she sinks down to sit on the floor, just in front of the shower.
“Don’t be stupid,” he warns.
Tara holds up her hands, clutching the shirt as he shuffles back. When the door shuts, her eyes close and she drags her legs to her chest. She drops her head against her knees and tries to breathe. She doesn’t know where her energy’s gone, why she’s suddenly frozen herself into place; it’s about survival, she tries to think, and her mind wanders back, way, way back into a place that she hasn’t touched in years. It’s about fathers and mothers and being a young, impulsive kid.
“Jax,” she breathes and her fingers loosen around the shirt. She feels it drop, slip from her hand and her eyes close tighter. She remembers, she can see herself, sixteen, on her bed and trying to understand what was going on with her life, wanting to leave, wanting to stay, and not wanting to be in love. This isn’t how it works.
Slowly though, her back straightens against the shower glass. She drops her legs, then her hands; they don’t rest on her knees. She stares at them, half-listening to the sudden, sharp sound of glass breaking somewhere downstairs. It’s her hands though, they’re what keep her staring steadily. Her fingers start to act first and they curl in the blood over her t-shirt, and right at her stomach, where all of it seems just too comfortable.
Hours ago, she thinks, she was expecting herself to be rational and thoughtful in a waiting room as the doctor and the woman who had no idea what was coming next. It still makes no sense to her.
“I’m sorry,” she says out loud. She stares at her stomach. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want - I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to know. And I feel like - I feel like I should know, I should know something - something’s got to make some sense. I’ve got to have something.”
Her head drops back. Her hand doesn’t move.
“We’re a mess, you know. I’m a mess. Your dad’s a mess. I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t even know if there’s going to be any time. If there’s supposed to be any time. But I -”
She starts to laugh then, soft and sudden. She can taste it and the back of her throat feels too tight, burning. She rubs her eyes and then rubs them again, harder and harder. Downstairs, underneath the crack of the door, she can hear more glass breaking. She imagines Salazar, angry and unraveling downstairs, somewhere, and wonders how easy it would be for him to just come upstairs and finish it all.
“I don’t regret what I did,” she says quietly.
Her hand moves back to her stomach. She is not okay.
“I loved Louisa.”
Salzar comes back late. Tara’s only moved to turn the light on in the bathroom. She’s looked everywhere but the shower and has managed to get some of the blood off her skin.
“I’m sure you did,” she murmurs.
“Does Jax love you?”
She looks up from the floor. Her gaze is steady, but her eyes narrow and she stares hard at him. The man smirks and then chuckles, as if he thinks he’s got something on her.
“It doesn’t matter.” She straightens. “You’re going to do what you do. He’s going to do what he needs to do. Isn’t that how it goes?”
Salazar’s smirk stays. “You don’t know,” he says. “You see, the way to keep an old lady loyal is -”
“To hit her?” she says dryly. She cuts him off on purpose, and then flinches when he steps into the bathroom. He moves to stand in front of her, where she can’t look away. “That goes over real well,” she mutters.
“And what do you know?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tara tells him.
She waits for the speech too; in her head, it’s a rant about women and not knowing their place. She saw the bruises under his girlfriend’s eyes, the glee that came with kicking her, and then the sudden terror as she died. She knows how most of that feels.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says too, “that you loved her,” she adds. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve made up your mind. And I’m pretty sure, however this is going to end, I’ve made up my mind too. Isn’t that how this is supposed to go?”
Salazar shakes his head. There’s no speech. There’s spite, but it’s not even for her. It’s just there and he watches her because she’s there. It’s something she knows how to understand.
“I get it,” he says simply. He mutters in Spanish, under his breath. “I get it,” he says again.
“Do you?” she can’t help but push, waiting for him to react. His hand runs over his eyes and he sort of slumps into the wall. She thinks about pressing then, suddenly, waiting and wondering how long would it take her to just run and protect herself. “I made this decision,” she says softly.
“What?”
She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. Salazar sighs, or maybe she sighs, and it’s at the point where she can’t tell anymore. Her eyes closes and she drops her head over her arms, as they wrap around her knees again. She doesn’t panic. This isn’t in her.
It’s quiet enough in the bathroom. For a moment, it’s like she’s not there.
In the morning she can still hear Salazar moving around downstairs. He’s come up again, and they haven’t really talked, or he’s talked and she’s sort of just listened.
Tara is standing now though. She stares hard at the small window. The shirt, his shirt, is hanging off her sides even though it’s buttoned close to her throat. Her hands are resting over the ledge and her nails scrape back and forth over the wood. She’s not waiting, and maybe it hasn’t been about waiting, maybe she’s moved passed that moment, long past that moment, where actions and reactions are supposed to make sense. She can take care of herself and there’s a small of her who just knows that she’s understood what to do all along.
Outside the bathroom door, the sound of boots coming up the stairs only makes her straighten slightly. She takes a deep breath and then shakes her head. Maybe she’ll sit back down again. Maybe she won’t.
This isn’t about Jax anymore.
sons of anarchy ; tara, salazar (jax/tara) ; 2,000 words ; pg
survival is a rite of passage. she’s learned well with history. spoilers for bainne.
-
Her eyes are open.
Salazar’s palm sweats into Tara’s throat. “You’re making this easy,” he tells her calmly. His eyes are wet too. “Falling right into my lap like that,” he says. “This is what I wanted.”
Tara stares. The smell of blood still sticks to the skin underneath her nose. It’s a mix of hers and the girlfriend’s, and her fingers are split carelessly from the glass that cut the other woman’s throat. She isn’t reacting. She is just aware. And the scene before continues to replay in her head.
It was so easy, she thinks. Her arm was angled the right way, her hand and then her fingers; it was all about instinct and practice. Doctors make the best cuts. And when Salazar’s girlfriend looked up at her, dying, Tara knew how to look away too.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
Salazar’s fingers uncurl briefly into her throat, but then he pulls back. Her mouth shudders into gasping and when he yanks her up to her feet, she stumbles forward into him. He turns her too and her arm cracks as it twists into her back.
His mouth brushes over her ear. She feels him exhale and she squints, looking into desert. It’s for miles and miles, and the dust seems to rise and fall with the very same awareness that she has, there and then gone. Salazar lets her shuffle forward too and her knees hit the side of his car. He’s going to have to lose the car, she thinks.
“Scared?” he breathes then, and she feels his fingers slide back over her throat, down and over her breasts. The shirt pulls itself into his palm and she forces herself to keep her gaze straight. Her teeth sink into her lip.
But she doesn’t answer. It’s the first time she doesn’t think of Jax.
They come to a house. Salazar opens the back of the trunk and she stares up at him, wide-eyed and silent as he reaches for her.
His eyes are wide. “It ain’t easy, you know,” he tells her. “Being in this, walking around and taking orders from some - doesn’t matter, he’s dead. I would’ve been the best, the very best, and she, she would’ve been right there with me.”
He starts to untie her gag. His fingers are slick in her hair, pulling out pieces of the rag; it’s the girlfriend’s shirt, but Tara tries not to think about it. When the fabric falls to the floor, she swallows back.
It’s the knife that comes out of nowhere. “What are you doing?” she asks quietly, and the blade flicks open. It clicks into place loudly and he shakes his head, kneeling front of her.
“What are you doing?” she ask again. He cuts the ties around her legs. The knife goes back into his pocket.
“I don’t understand you,” Salazar says finally, and she looks up, around and at the garage that they’re in. The walls are bare and the car sits between rows of metal shelves. “I expected Teller’s old lady to be different.”
She doesn’t have time to laugh, and he drags her backwards, her feet skidding against the floor. She almost trips over herself too, as Salazar drags her to the stairs, and chooses to lean most of her weight into him. She bites her lip and keeps her gaze done.
Somehow, they make it inside. He pulls her into a hallway, empty too, and then into another room. Salazar pushes her into a chair and Tara manages to steady herself, her tied hands pressing into a table. She sit with shaky legs and lets them drop in front of her.
“There’s no place to go,” he says.
“Right,” she murmurs.
She watches as he pulls out the knife again. He opens the blade with his fingers, yanking it back into place. He studies it too, looking at the metal and half-watching her, waiting for her to give him some kind of reaction.
Don’t, she tells herself. Her head spins a little with memories, odd and misplaced; for a second, she’s back home and in the kitchen, and in another second, she’s back in her father’s house and there’s Josh, standing over her with that sick twist of a smile.
Salazar drops the knife into the sink. Tara jumps and catches the dark circles under his knife finally. There is still blood against his face, stained into his shirt, and she tries to remember his girlfriend’s name.
“Louisa,” he says, catching her. “It was Louisa.”
“I know,” she lies.
He eyes her carefully. “This isn’t about you, you know.”
“I know.”
“You know where he is.”
It’s a strange statement and she’s staring at Salazar, completely confused. Her mouth opens and then closes. Her eyes hurt.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice is calm. “It doesn’t matter if I know where he is or not because you don’t care.”
“I’m going to kill you,” he says. His mouth starts to curl, slowly, thoughtful, and he leans back into the counter. He doesn’t pick up the knife and she can’t look away; it might be his eyes, the way they stay open and wide, the blood that sort of just hangs off his skin, and it might just be because she’s almost scared and it’s not just her here.
Tara looks away. “I know,” she says.
Salazar keeps her in a bathroom. He tosses her a shirt and she sinks down to sit on the floor, just in front of the shower.
“Don’t be stupid,” he warns.
Tara holds up her hands, clutching the shirt as he shuffles back. When the door shuts, her eyes close and she drags her legs to her chest. She drops her head against her knees and tries to breathe. She doesn’t know where her energy’s gone, why she’s suddenly frozen herself into place; it’s about survival, she tries to think, and her mind wanders back, way, way back into a place that she hasn’t touched in years. It’s about fathers and mothers and being a young, impulsive kid.
“Jax,” she breathes and her fingers loosen around the shirt. She feels it drop, slip from her hand and her eyes close tighter. She remembers, she can see herself, sixteen, on her bed and trying to understand what was going on with her life, wanting to leave, wanting to stay, and not wanting to be in love. This isn’t how it works.
Slowly though, her back straightens against the shower glass. She drops her legs, then her hands; they don’t rest on her knees. She stares at them, half-listening to the sudden, sharp sound of glass breaking somewhere downstairs. It’s her hands though, they’re what keep her staring steadily. Her fingers start to act first and they curl in the blood over her t-shirt, and right at her stomach, where all of it seems just too comfortable.
Hours ago, she thinks, she was expecting herself to be rational and thoughtful in a waiting room as the doctor and the woman who had no idea what was coming next. It still makes no sense to her.
“I’m sorry,” she says out loud. She stares at her stomach. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want - I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to know. And I feel like - I feel like I should know, I should know something - something’s got to make some sense. I’ve got to have something.”
Her head drops back. Her hand doesn’t move.
“We’re a mess, you know. I’m a mess. Your dad’s a mess. I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t even know if there’s going to be any time. If there’s supposed to be any time. But I -”
She starts to laugh then, soft and sudden. She can taste it and the back of her throat feels too tight, burning. She rubs her eyes and then rubs them again, harder and harder. Downstairs, underneath the crack of the door, she can hear more glass breaking. She imagines Salazar, angry and unraveling downstairs, somewhere, and wonders how easy it would be for him to just come upstairs and finish it all.
“I don’t regret what I did,” she says quietly.
Her hand moves back to her stomach. She is not okay.
“I loved Louisa.”
Salzar comes back late. Tara’s only moved to turn the light on in the bathroom. She’s looked everywhere but the shower and has managed to get some of the blood off her skin.
“I’m sure you did,” she murmurs.
“Does Jax love you?”
She looks up from the floor. Her gaze is steady, but her eyes narrow and she stares hard at him. The man smirks and then chuckles, as if he thinks he’s got something on her.
“It doesn’t matter.” She straightens. “You’re going to do what you do. He’s going to do what he needs to do. Isn’t that how it goes?”
Salazar’s smirk stays. “You don’t know,” he says. “You see, the way to keep an old lady loyal is -”
“To hit her?” she says dryly. She cuts him off on purpose, and then flinches when he steps into the bathroom. He moves to stand in front of her, where she can’t look away. “That goes over real well,” she mutters.
“And what do you know?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tara tells him.
She waits for the speech too; in her head, it’s a rant about women and not knowing their place. She saw the bruises under his girlfriend’s eyes, the glee that came with kicking her, and then the sudden terror as she died. She knows how most of that feels.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says too, “that you loved her,” she adds. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve made up your mind. And I’m pretty sure, however this is going to end, I’ve made up my mind too. Isn’t that how this is supposed to go?”
Salazar shakes his head. There’s no speech. There’s spite, but it’s not even for her. It’s just there and he watches her because she’s there. It’s something she knows how to understand.
“I get it,” he says simply. He mutters in Spanish, under his breath. “I get it,” he says again.
“Do you?” she can’t help but push, waiting for him to react. His hand runs over his eyes and he sort of slumps into the wall. She thinks about pressing then, suddenly, waiting and wondering how long would it take her to just run and protect herself. “I made this decision,” she says softly.
“What?”
She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. Salazar sighs, or maybe she sighs, and it’s at the point where she can’t tell anymore. Her eyes closes and she drops her head over her arms, as they wrap around her knees again. She doesn’t panic. This isn’t in her.
It’s quiet enough in the bathroom. For a moment, it’s like she’s not there.
In the morning she can still hear Salazar moving around downstairs. He’s come up again, and they haven’t really talked, or he’s talked and she’s sort of just listened.
Tara is standing now though. She stares hard at the small window. The shirt, his shirt, is hanging off her sides even though it’s buttoned close to her throat. Her hands are resting over the ledge and her nails scrape back and forth over the wood. She’s not waiting, and maybe it hasn’t been about waiting, maybe she’s moved passed that moment, long past that moment, where actions and reactions are supposed to make sense. She can take care of herself and there’s a small of her who just knows that she’s understood what to do all along.
Outside the bathroom door, the sound of boots coming up the stairs only makes her straighten slightly. She takes a deep breath and then shakes her head. Maybe she’ll sit back down again. Maybe she won’t.
This isn’t about Jax anymore.