we don’t know

who we are

until we’re connected to someone else

TRIGGER WARNING/MENTIONS OF: Cancer, Alcoholism, Stalking, Child Loss, Abortion, Death, Gun Violence, Sexual Assault, Hoarding, and Intimate Partner Abuse and Violence.// HISTORY.         Before her mother died, when she was nine years old — breast cancer, caught far too late for it to be treatable, her father was somewhat of a workaholic. Long, late nights where she was passed around relatives, babysitters and coworkers with more free time. Random week long business trips, that kind of thing. “that was just always how it was in sales”, her mom would reassure her on nights when they ate dinner, empty place setting looming at the head of the table. The older she got, the more things Tara seemed to forget about her mother, though that always stayed.It’s true what they say, how doctors make for the worst patients, and her mother was no exception. Not a day went by where she wasn’t loudly lamenting to her doctors and nurses, anyone who would listen, how even working in private practice won’t save you. Tara remembers sitting by her hospital bed, while she tried to recover from surgery they said likely wouldn’t work. Her mom, in all her strength, tried to fight anyway. She lasted 6 more days in that hospital bed before a missed post-op infection took her, and not for lack of trying to save her. They worked on her for hours, trying to control her sepsis, but just like her cancer, it was caught too late. Part of her felt grateful she never had to see her like that, another part guilty for not being there.And after that day, her father was forever changed. In his grief, he had lost his job, something he always played off as a lay-off, rather than a firing. and suddenly, he was present, he was there.. but it was not the same dad she remembered. He became withdrawn, took a job programming computers, something he could do from the comfort of home. Despite being a child, Tara noticed everything that changed about her father and his demeanor. His hands would shake, he would sneak off and hole up in his room the second she was occupied with anything, and come out smelling like whiskey. Entire rooms of their home slowly filled up with unnecessary junk, all things he insisted were for her. For her benefit, even when she had no use for them whatsoever. Some became unusable, not to be bothered with.The worst was when it seeped into her own habits, causing her to hoard things in her own bedroom to avoid the mess outside the door. Even the garage was full of old, useless bullshit like newspapers, magazines, receipts and grocery lists. He couldn’t bear to part with anything else.After having suffered her father’s neglectful habits for years, Tara learned how to avoid going home as long as possible. and living around Charming, getting out and about meant, at some point, coming into contact with the Sons. Especially being in the same classes with the aspiring heir of the whole club. Most people saw him as some untouchable badass, or a delinquent, doomed to a life of crime. But he didn’t talk that way, not really. Sure, she saw that side of him, it would be a lie to say she didn’t. But there were far more important things she saw in him.Tara saw his ambition, his charm, his aching bleeding heart, that soft vulnerable underbelly most wouldn’t even bother to imagine exists. She got to see Jackson, the boy who spoke of following his late fathers careful footfalls, who cried on her shoulder about his baby brother who never got to grow up. A heart defect that ran in their family, and as he told her, she wondered in the back of her mind if her mom would have known how to fix it. It was those thoughts, brought on by hearing of complications, of surgeons who had tried and failed and tried again anyway, that made her want to pursue it herself. Those lingering thoughts of her mom serving as the driving force, letting her soft, protective heart heal others in ways she could not mend her own life.The least of all, Jax Teller offered her the one she hadn’t managed to scrounge up herself yet, transportation. And through that? Independence. No longer trapped in that house with her father, a living ghost haunting his own home. Jax would take her places with no expectation of having to follow her there. Asked her for nothing in return, even when it earned him glaring glances from his ever-protective mother. But the more that they spent time together, the more she wished just one of these times, he would ask to follow her. She eventually found the thing she wanted to give him in return was … love.That which she found so shockingly easy to give to him, that seemed flowed freely between them. Easily drawn-out conversations, not realizing how much time had passed until the street lights were buzzing to life above their heads. Sneaking phone calls and sleeping in his bed, letting him ride her to and from school almost every day. As inseperable as they were, and as much as Jax had let her in, it was like there was this wall put up between them.Tara was 18, freshly graduated from high school, two weeks out from her 19th birthday when she decided to get a massive crow tattooed on her lower back. Jax didn’t even ask her to do it, he never would. But she figured it would please not only him, but the rest of the club too, and there was no one else she wanted— no, needed to impress was Jax’s mother, Gemma. She who was always distrustful of Tara’s needing ways, doubting her every motivation with her son. She realized, when not even this act was enough to prove her love and her loyalty, that this could not last. That she needed something more to sustain a full life for herself, a life outside the fire that her love with Jax brought her.That was the first time Tara left. Between the strain on her and her sweetheart, her father’s worsening alcoholism and hoarding, she made one desperate call to her cousin Nadine in San Diego. Asking if her mother would let her stay with them while she applied frantically to scholarships and medical schools up there. It was another stroke luck for her when she said yes. Jax saw her off, he insisted on helping her haul her stuff up there, and just like she always had.. she let him help. They both knew then, when they said their goodbyes amongst a pile of what belongings of hers she could salvage from her childhood home, it would not be the last time they would see one another.
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Tara completed med school, and after that she was able to complete her internship in Chicago, at Cook County General. Though there was a part of her that hated moving again, even being in California began to feel like too much for her to handle. Occasional visits from Jax here and there during her schooling. When he could manage to get away from the noise and the bustle and the bullshit of the club. Every time he snubbed an invite to come see her, it reminded her all over again why she ignored what her heart told her so bad she wanted.Chicago was different, so different than anywhere she’d lived before. Tara thinks she didn’t even know you could get this fucking cold. Doesn’t think that it’s good for anyone to be this cold for this long, for there to be this much snow. It was so much more a city, too. Being there only made her realize how much that Charming was truly out in the country. The people at county were good people, interesting people, she couldn’t imagine a better place to practice and prepare for her residency. She never felt like she grew all that close with anyone, but she felt like that in most aspects of her life. She spent most of her time in the OR, so she didn’t get to know everyone as well as she wanted.She fully planned to change all that, wrestling between staying in surgery or switching to emergency medicine. Part of her just wanted to be around more people, more types of patients instead of staring at people’s insides all day. Only to leave a thousand miles away from being human, wondering if even just emergency surgery would cut it for her needs.She had a boyfriend, Zachary Kohn, and he kept her pretty damn busy outside of work. He was the majority of the reason she never made meaningful connections while working at county. He was an ATF agent, intense, but not brooding. Emotionally honest, and open, but obsessive. It was something she… thought she liked, until he even thought he had got gotten her pregnant and suddenly became terrifying. Following her everywhere, showing up randomly at work, insisting on driving her home. It got to the point where she questioned what he even really did for a living. When he finally did get her pregnant, she terminated it at 6 weeks.Her thoughts on her career were slammed to a screeching halt when she got the call that her father had suddenly passed away in the night. Some sick, secret part of her was ecstatic at the idea of running away again, of having an excuse to tell Zach she had to suddenly move away.Suddenly, everything changed — she needed to leave Chicago, she needed to find a surgical residency position in Charming, she needed to clean out her childhood home and settle things with his estate. It would bring her nothing other than material comfort, the sum of money her father left for her, one that wouldn’t even begin to cover everything else he had left for her. She was sad, bordering on melancholic, but there was also an undeniable anger that bubbled inside her. At herself, at Greg, at being back in Charming, knowing it would be only a matter of time before all her old wounds began to re-open.The second rip of her her sutures came during only her fourth week at St. Thomas, a little preemie baby named Abel. She thought for sure she read the chart wrong at the name of the baby’s father. Jackson Teller. He had a baby with another woman, someone she’d never even heard of before. She couldn’t focus on that, even when she had to take an extra long break after the procedure was finished. Before she could face Jax, before she could see or talk to him. She had to sneak off and just sob, knowing she had just fixed in his first-born son what all the surgeons in Charming couldn’t save in his baby brother Thomas all those lifetimes ago.—————————————————
She convinces herself that she isn’t going to let Jax back in, that she isn’t going to lean on him anymore. That’s unti Zachary shows up on the pretense of ATF business. Tara immediately snells the bullshit, but she doesn’t immediately call for the Sons’ aid. She does everything in her power to go through the proper channels, the restraining order, talking to Sherriff Hale. It all ended up being no use, and she called Jax anyway. She just needed someone she knew she could trust to protect her. To do anything it took not only to make her safe, but make sure she felf safe.Gemma had been the one to give her an untraceable gun to protect herself with, having noticed she was carrying. It came in handy the day that, as Jax was leaving, Zach had been lying in wait for just the right moment to strike. Covering her mouth as she tried to scream through that, through doors, walls, and over the horribly deafening roar of Jax’s bike firing up outside. Kohn confronting Tara about their baby she had aborted, if you could even call 6 weeks a baby . She bit him, and in his confusion and the scuffle, she managed to get her gun and hit him in the shoulder. Screaming, crying, horrified at what she had done even in defense of herself.. she had to call Jax back. He would help her. Help pacify him, help the situation or at the very least help her flee.When Jax arrived, he started in on Kohn immediately, and Zach replied with his sharp, poisonous tongue like he always did. Things that needn’t be repeated for her own sake. But disrespectful, and threatening enough to earn him one between the eyebrows from Jax.Even as Tara screamed in the abject horror, part of her just felt the overwhelming safety of this place, of the first man she’d ever really loved. So she stayed in Charming, stayed where she felt safe and sound in the reach of the one person she knew would always protect her.Even when the club scared her, even when they made her play field medic. Holding the line when Jax and the boys went back to jail. Using the time away to collect and gather all the evidence she needed to finally show Jax once and for all how toxic Clay Morrow always had been. Not even Tara knew she would stumble on the darkness that was the implication that Clay had Jax’s father’s bike sabotaged, leading to his death. It’s something she knew that Jax would need to know, something he deserved to know.It was only a matter of time before Clay managed to find out just exactly where this leak of information came from.But she drew the line at attempts on her life, especially those that end up threatening the one thing of good she does in this world. Saving lives with her hands. She and Jax had just been sleeping on eachother in the grass at a park, they decided to walk around a bit and Jax had parted to use a restroom across the way. A van pulled up as Tara’s back was turned and as she was pulled in she attempted to brace her right hand on the door.As the car turned the bend, her hand was smashed as the door slammed almost fully across all her knuckles. She screamed and kicked and Jax was after her in seconds, firing at the tires of the van. As Tara bit, scratched, clawed until she could reach his hand and be pulled to relative safety. He immediately shielded her body with his as all guns in the van were drawn down on them both as they drove off while they still could.
—————————————————It would be almost eight months before she saw even the slightest of improvements in her range of motion. she remained strong as she always did. but there were some nights she would turn the shower on full blast, sit under the unforgiving, almost boiling spray of water. she painstakingly tried to coax her stiff and unwilling fingers back the way they belonged. into the way they served her before, gave her a purpose she found nowhere else in her life. crying as she prepared herself to grieve the only thing that could save her from this hell.slowly, she regained her ability, her strength, was able to do simple sutures on a dummy arm. it was only nine months after that when she gained almost full control of her hand again, the nerve pain and aches something she thinks she can handle in exchange for her purpose back.

ER VERSE(s) 001 & 002   :   INITIATION / HOMECOMING .       INITIATION: FOLLOWS THE INITIAL PORITON OF THE BIO, TARA DOES HER INTERNSHIP AT COUNTY. / HOMECOMING: TARA RETURNS TO COUNTY FOR A MORE PERMANENT POSITION EVEN IF SHE CANNOT WORK AS A SURGEON. FOLLOWS THE FINAL PORTION OF HER BIO.002 SOA!VERSE   :   CAGED       canon as it gets. probably will be rarely used.THE PITT 003   :         For this verse, it’s similar to ER but she doesn’t have the prior experience/pre-existing relationships she would have working at county. Basically just pretend she moved from Charming to Pittsburgh instead. Still debating specialties and the like.004 OFF THE RECORD   :         SOA adjacent but this is a verse i will use as a catch-all so you can call tara for all your off the record, needs a house call needs.

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