The Anarchist's Heart

When I woke up that morning, I thought it was going to be a good day, great, even. I started the day out utterly content and happy, maybe even a little more confident in my decisions, but by the end I was pale white and shaking at the table, wrapped in Gemma’s jacket as she tried to comfort me. As I sat there, sobbing and yet hardly making a sound, I couldn’t help but try to figure out how I even got there…

The bright light of late morning blanketed the room in gold as it broke past the curtains. Jax rolled me over onto my back, grinning broadly at me before he nipped playfully at my nose.

“And what a good morning it’s been,” he said, his voice gravelly from sleep.

I chuckled and stretched my neck out for a kiss. After, I let my head fall back onto the pillow as I sighed happily.

“I haven’t celebrated an anniversary like that in—”

“Mm, ten years?” Jax lifted a cocky eyebrow at me and smirked.

I laughed. “Yes, actually, you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” he replied, releasing me so he could stand up and walk to the dresser. “And it’s only the morning, darlin’.”

I gave myself a moment for thought on the matter and then convinced myself to get out of bed and get dressed, regardless of how badly I wanted to stay in it all day.

Jax and I normally never celebrated our “anniversaries.” We used to, before he became involved with the club, but even then it was only ever our yearly anniversaries that we felt counted for anything. That morning had not been a yearly anniversary, but it had been enough of an excuse for us.

“I only wish we could stay here today, me and you,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, me too, but you have work and I have…club business.” He answered.

“Yes,” I sighed. “How long will you be?”

“Hard to say. Four, five hours maybe. Two, if things go really well.”

“Right, okay. It’s 11:48 now…I should be done everything by three o’clock, three-thirty at the latest.”

“Alright. I’m sending Happy with you to the school to keep an eye out.” Jax, now fully dressed except for his leather, kissed me on the cheek as he headed out of the bedroom.

I gave a small groan and followed him. “Does it have to be Happy? I mean, no offence, he’s nice and all, but…well, he creeps me out. A little.”

Jax sniggered, popping a sliced bagel into the toaster. “A little, huh? He’ll be in a car your grandmother would drive, if that makes you feel any better about it.”

“Mm, I can’t say that it will,” I responded, turning the coffee on.

Breakfast tasted wonderful, despite it only being a bowl of Cheerios and a cup of coffee. The thing that made it so enjoyable was getting to eat it with Jax, which was something that rarely happened. For one reason or another we were always rushed in the mornings; he was either racing off to the clubhouse or I was running around trying to get ready to go to work. Getting to spend some extra time with him in the morning was a great gift that made me feel very happy and very thankful for that day.

I got to work alright and tried my best to ignore the old Buick that was idling up to park on the opposite side of the street as I walked into the school. One of the janitors was there, sweeping.

“Well, hello,” he said kindly. “Nice to see you again.”

“Hello, Hector,” I gave him a smile as I searched my key ring for the key to my classroom door.

“I swear you’re the only one that I see here when there’s no school going on,” he muttered, resuming his task.

“Well, if I did all my work at home I’d never get anything done, trust me.” I replied.

My classroom was quite a mess when I walked in. I groaned, suddenly remembering that a fire drill had cut my class short on Friday and everyone had left their paintbrushes, pencils, and papers out on the tables. I hadn’t had time to clean it up afterwards so I had just left it for my future self to deal with. My present self was silently cursing my past self for doing that. I started a playlist on my phone for some work music and began to clear away the mess. Washing the paintbrushes took the longest as all the paint was dried onto the bristles, some of it in thick globs. I had to take extra care not to rip out a bunch of bristles while I cleaned them.

It took roughly fifteen minutes to get everything cleaned and put back in its place. The janitors would wipe down the tables and sweep the floor so I got right into my work. It was time to hand in my official grades for report cards for the semester, so I was busy grading the last few assignments and calculating everyone’s final marks. Some certainly excelled more than others, but at least everyone passed. It wasn’t like art was a difficult class to pass anyways, but a teacher still hoped for a class average that was above seventy percent. Sadly, the biggest reason for poor marks was the simple fact that some students just did not come to class. This meant that next term I’d have to give that ugly teacher talk about attendance and how much it counts and how it can lead to a failure, blah, blah, blah. I knew there wasn’t a single student that enjoyed listening to that lecture, especially when they actually attended class, but it was all I could do without chaining kids to their tables and forcing them to stay for the duration of the period.

Finally finished my work, I ordered my papers, gathered up my things and dropped off my final grades at the office for them to be transferred onto report cards. My hand was sore from calculating and writing out notes but I ignored it. I walked out to my car and couldn’t have been sitting in it for five minutes before I heard the sound of an engine idling up next to me. My heard thudded for a moment before I looked over and noticed it was Happy in the Buick. I rolled down my window as he rolled down his.

“You going straight home?” he asked in his raspy voice.

“Um, I was going to make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a couple things, why?”

“Shit. I got a call and I gotta go help the guys out. Think you can handle yourself?”

I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can.”

“Alright. Call if you’re in trouble.” Then he was gone.

I sighed and began to reverse out of my parking spot. Having a tail on me had certainly not been my favourite thing, but I supposed it was better than nothing. We parted ways and I headed to the grocery store. I was hoping to find something to make for dinner tonight, in the foolish hope that Jax might actually be home for it. Despite the fact that I knew him better now and thus understood his situation, a part of me still continued to doubt his devotion to me. Every time he said he’d make it home in time for dinner or in time to go out somewhere, just the two of us, a voice in the back of my head told me he wouldn’t show. Instead I’d get a phone call after two hours had gone by and hear that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. It had happened so often all those years ago that, despite how much it bothered me, I’d somehow just grown to expect it. And now I was trying to get myself out of that habit, but I was having troubles succeeding still.

I decided steak and salad was the way to go for our hopeful romantic dinner. I don’t like to brag, but I made a damn good Caesar salad. I enjoyed my cobb salad and garden salad, too, but Caesar was Jax’s favourite. I picked up the necessary ingredients plus some other items that we were lacking and paid for it all, feeling quite good about everything. My day had been wonderful so far. I felt like nothing could steal that sensation away from me.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking a trip to the grocery store was a good idea. The parking spaces in front of the building were filled, and so I’d had to park a couple buildings over. The store and a small thrift store were fairly close together, but there was a wide alley between the thrift store and its other neighbouring building. I was passing by that alley, just about to hit unlock on my car, when rough hands grabbed me and pulled me backwards into the alley, hard. I only got out a little whooping startled scream before a hand clamped down over my mouth. The amount of pressure being exerted hurt; my teeth were biting into my lips and the force was making me bite down harder unintentionally. It wasn’t long before the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. The other arm was pressed hard against my ribs and considering that I was being pressed against a solid brick wall, I worried that he may break my ribs. But I soon realized that likely wasn’t going to be his method of hurting me: he had a handgun pointed at my belly. I felt the pressure of the metal barrel over my navel.

That had all happened in a matter of seconds, but to me it felt like an hour before I finally got full comprehension of what was happening. My attacker’s face was inches from mine and I could smell tobacco on his breath. His eyes were a dull blue, he wore a navy blue hat, and he had a greying beard. When he spoke, he pressed the gun harder into my stomach.

“You don’t make a sound, do you hear me?” he hissed.

I didn’t know what to do. I just nodded.

“We’ve been watching you, Elizabeth,” he growled, “every minute of every day. We know where you live, where you work, and where you go and what you do every day of the week. You can’t do a damn thing that we don’t know about. So that’s how I know you’ll listen close and do as I tell you.”

My eyes were wide and my heart was racing. We were just starting to think the threat had passed. They’d been following me the whole time. But my question was, who were they?

“You’re going to go home and tell Jax Teller and all the Sons of Anarchy that they’re going to answer for what they did to Alvin. Now they had no right to kill him. He did wrong, and they were going to teach him a lesson, we knew that, but they had no right to kill him.”

The pieces were clicking into place. Alvin was the man Clay made me trick so they could get even with him. He was the man that Jax killed because he’d been hurting me and Jax hadn’t liked it.

“Tell your man he’s started a war with us and he better consider paying off his blood debt or someone else will, and that someone will be you.”

Oh my god. I was going to die.

“He has forty-eight hours. If he doesn’t give himself over in that time, we come and collect you. Either way, it’s going to be him or it’s going to be you. We can work with either. Do you understand, Old Lady?”

I nodded, tears beginning to fall down my face.

“Good.” I felt the pressure on my belly alleviate just before I got a sharp pain in my face as the gun collided with it. As the pain sparked through my nerves, I was released and I fell to the ground. I could hear footsteps running away from me but everything was blurry and I felt dizzy.

I could barely wrap my fingers around the phone in my pocket, my hand were shaking so badly. I managed to extract it and it took me what felt like an eternity to dial the only number I could think of. None of the guys would be available; I didn’t even know if they were nearby. So I phoned someone I knew would answer. I phoned Gemma.

It wasn’t ten minutes later she was picking me up off the ground and ushering me into the passenger seat of her car. I could barely hear the questions she was asking me let alone figure out how to answer them. All I told her over the phone was that I had been attacked and where I was. I knew I had to explain in more detail eventually, but I was still trying to comprehend what had just happened to me. Once I successfully managed that, I could try to explain. But I think Gemma got the point after five minutes of unanswered questions and silence on my end.

She took me back to Jax’s house and quickly sat me down at the table. She set the groceries she’d been kind enough to pick up off of the ground after I’d dropped them in the attack on the counter and put her jacket over my shoulders. I guess I was shaking.

“You’re going to need to give me something, sweetheart,” she urged.

“I…they’re going to kill me. Or Jax, or both of us. I don’t know.” I stammered.

“Who’s ‘they’?” she asked in a low voice.

“The Nazis…they were friends with the guy Jax killed and they’re pissed, they’re really pissed. They threatened Jax and they threatened me. If Jax doesn’t do as they say they’re going to take me. Forty-eight hours, they said he had forty-eight hours.”

“Christ,” Gemma hissed. “Alright, you sit here. I’ll make some tea and call Jax.”

I nearly shouted “no.” My lips dropped open to speak but I shut them again in an instant. While I didn’t want to see Jax’s reaction to this news, I knew he had to find out, or it could spell the end for both of us. I just wasn’t ready to look into his face and see worry and self-hate brewing there. It was one of the hardest things to watch.

“Jackson, you need to come home right now. Shit is hitting the fan and your girlfriend is taking the brunt end of it…uh-huh…hurry, then.” She hung up the phone.

“He’s on his way. How are you feeling?” she asked. I could hear her digging out the kettle and filling it with water, but I didn’t turn to watch. I stayed stationary on my chair, staring at the door. I’d hear his motorcycle before he walked in, but I wanted to make sure that he saw me first and saw that I was alright. If anything it might alleviate some of his panic.

“I’ll be fine once Jax gets here,” I replied absentmindedly.

“Uh-huh, and what about when he leaves again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, me either.”

It wasn’t ten minutes later I heard the roar of his bike outside. It died suddenly and I strained my ears to hear his footsteps rushing up to the door. When he entered his blonde hair was in disarray; he hadn’t bothered to fix it after taking off his helmet. His eyes were wide in panic and his mouth was open slightly and yet tight; as if he was withholding himself from saying something he desperately wanted to say. He dropped his keys on the floor and ran over to where I sat, kneeling down so as to be eye-level with me.

“Ella, what happened? Are you alright? Who did this to you?” He gestured to the darkening bruise the spread across my temple.

“You better sit down, honey,” Gemma said, setting tea on the table. “I think your girl has a lot to get off her chest.”