The Anarchist's Heart

She had never felt so alone.

All dressed in black, she sat in the cool, shaded grass next to the fresh mound of earth under the large oak tree. A shining headstone was all she had left to look at. She’d never hear her grandmother’s voice again, or her laugh, and in time she feared she’d forget what both of those had sounded like. She’d never see her smile again, and she’d never enter her grandparent’s home to the smell of a fresh blueberry pie that her grandma had made just for her. Her heart was broken and she was all alone.

The funeral had ended hours ago. After the funeral, everyone had gone to Ella’s parent’s house for tea, coffee, and food. They were all talking about their fond memories of her grandma and all the great things she’d done before cancer had claimed her, and after only forty-five minutes Ella had had enough. She’d left through the back door and ran. She’d kept running until she had hit the Charming cemetery, and then she collapsed next to her grandma’s final resting place and she had wept for her. She’d kept her tears in all day, even during the funeral, but she couldn’t do it anymore. There were people in her house talking about her grandma and remembering her, but all Ella wanted was her grandma in the flesh so she could hug her one last time. She’d only gotten fourteen years with her; it wasn’t fair.

Ella wiped at her eyes and nose, leaving wet spots on the sleeve of her black cardigan. Her blonde hair stuck to the tear paths on her cheeks and she furiously brushed it away. Everything was annoying her.

“There you are.”

She jumped, although she really shouldn’t have been surprised. Her best friend was like her shadow most days. She looked over her shoulder to see Jax walking towards her, still in his baggy plaid shirt with the tie that didn’t match and black dress pants that carried his hands in the pockets. His blonde hair was sticking up in places, but his warm blue stare distracted her from all of that; from his mismatched outfit, his messy hair, and even her heartbreak, sort of.

She didn’t say anything to him. She wiped at her face again and turned back to her grandma’s grave. He sat down beside her with a gentle sigh and began plucking blades of grass from the softened earth.

“When I came back from getting us drinks and you were nowhere to be found I figured you’d be here,” he explained. “Y’know, if you were planning on ditching you could’ve told me first. I would’ve come with you.”

“They were all talking about her like they knew everything about her,” Ella grumbled. “Half of them barely knew her at all. They were all telling me how great of a woman she was, like I didn’t know. I hate them all.”

“No you don’t,” Jax argued. “You’re just sad, Ella. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Ella snapped. “I’m not okay.”

“I know,” Jax said softly. There was understanding in his eyes that sliced right through Ella. God, how could she be so selfish? She wasn’t the only one who knew pain. She wasn’t the only one who knew loss.

She looked across the field of graves at the pristine white headstones, all aligned in perfect rows. The soldier’s graves. That was where Jax’s father rested. His brother was buried nearby, too. How could she have forgotten?

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I just…I miss her.”

“It’s okay, Ella,” Jax said, putting a comforting arm across her shoulders. She leaned her head against his chest and he held her there, running his hand over her tangled hair. “And fuck those other people. They may have known her name but she wasn’t their grandma. She was yours. You can mourn her as long and however you want. But I’m gonna be here for you, okay? Just like I’ve always been.”

“I know,” Ella sniffed, trying not to get any mess on Jax’s wrinkled shirt. “I’m glad I still have you, at least.”

“You always will, El. You know that.”

Ella chuckled to herself after a moment of silence, sitting up a little straighter but still leaning into Jax’s embrace.

“My grandma loved you, did you know that? She talked about you to me all the time.”

Jax made a noise of disbelief. “No way. I mean, I knew she could tolerate me more than your parents can, but really?”

“Yeah. She told me you look at me like I have the whole world growing in my eyes, or something like that. She was pretty embarrassing about it—all that relationship stuff; you know how it is.”

“What, she thought I wanted to date you?” Jax laughed awkwardly.

“Yeah, she really, really did. She never let it go, either.”

Jax ran his fingers through his light smattering of blonde facial hair. He looked at Ella’s grandmother’s headstone with a smirk and shook his head.

“Damn, that woman was too smart sometimes,” he murmured.

Ella’s laugh died off and she gave him a confused look. “What?”

Jax shrugged. “She was right, as always.”

“She…wait, what are you saying?”

“I think you know.”

“Jax…we’re at my grandma’s grave…”

“Don’t tell me now she wouldn’t have wanted this.”

Ella sighed but gave a half-shrug, half-nod anyway.

“So…” she mumbled, trying to urge him into saying something partially definitive.

“So, I can’t stop thinking about you, El,” Jax said. He was tapping his foot, and Ella knew he was nervous. Jax was rarely ever nervous about anything. “And I don’t mean that in the ‘I worry about you’ way, even though I do that, too. I mean I can’t stop thinking about your smile, your voice, your laugh, your personality…even your stupid jokes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for a very, very long time. Why do you think I haven’t tried to get myself a girlfriend, even after all those times you tried to set me up with one of your friends? I don’t want them, Ella. I want you. I’ve always wanted you, I think, so…here’s me telling you, at your grandma’s grave, after you’ve been crying your eyes out. It’s not how I pictured it, but who the fuck cares? I mean, you can do with this information what you want, but…I had to tell you sometime. Now’s as good as ever, I guess.”

Ella fell silent for a moment, staring off into space. If she thought about it, she supposed she could’ve guessed it a long time ago. She and Jax were always together, holding hands and watching movies and doing all the typical relationship stuff apart from kissing etcetera, etcetera, but they were only friends. She faintly remembered a night several months prior when they’d been eating fries and sitting on the railway tracks just outside of town, and Jax had said something silly that made her laugh and when she’d looked at him and seen him with that huge grin on his face, for a brief moment she’d thought, “He’s cute”. She’d kept thinking about that for the rest of the night; she’d even lied awake in bed thinking about it. If she’d called him cute, did that mean she liked him? She’d told herself no then, just for comfort. He was her best friend; she couldn’t think he was cute. That’d be giving into all the negative stereotypes about boy and girl friends, and she hated doing that. But when she finally snapped out of her daze and looked at him under the oak tree in the cemetery, the thought came back to her: “He’s cute. He’s more than cute. He’s amazing.”

Open-mouthed, and with a numb tongue she somehow managed to speak.

“So…are you asking me to be your girlfriend? What are you saying?” she whispered.

He took a moment to think about it before giving her a nod and definitively saying “Yep.”

“I…my grandmother just died,” Ella stammered.

“I know.”

“We’re sitting in front of her grave. Her…her dead body is right there under the ground.”

“I know. I’m not really romantic, Ella, you know that. Sorry. At least the sun is setting. That’s something, right?”

“I…I don’t…”

“You don’t what? You don’t want to be my girlfriend?”

“I’m not sure what to say…” Ella muttered, tripping over her words.

“An answer would be nice.”

Her lips quirked up a little at the snarky response that was so typical of him.

“You really feel that way about me?” she asked.

“Yeah, Ella, I do,” Jax plucked at the grass between his legs. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do, and I can’t stop.”

Ella smiled then, and, having made her decision, leaned in and softly kissed him. It was gentle, but it was lengthy, and it felt like heaven.

“Yes,” she whispered afterwards. “With my dead grandma as witness, I’ll be your girlfriend, Jax Teller.”



It was hard for me not to think about Jax while I walked through the Charming cemetery. As morbid as it sounds, we’d spent a lot of time in the graveyard when we were younger. Either we were visiting his dad or brother or my grandma or all three or we were just walking through, but we always seemed to find ourselves there. It was our spot for a little while, until we got our own place. It was weird, yes, but we didn’t care. At least no one could bother us there.

But I wasn’t there for Jax that day. I was there for my grandmother. My eyes stung a little as I wandered up to her grave, twirling the single white rose back and forth between my fingers. It’d been so long…her headstone had collected some dirt in the lettering, and the grass around its edges had grown longer than the rest, and there was no longer a mound of dirt where her casket had been lowered. Now it was all grass and dandelions, like she wasn’t even under there at all. I bent down to wipe away some of the dirt and debris, nibbling on my lower lip to keep myself from crying. All those years and I still missed her so much.

“Hey,” I whispered, “it’s been awhile.”

After standing there awkwardly for a few moments I decided to settle down on the grass next to her grave, still holding onto the rose for something to fiddle with. If I didn’t have something to do, I wouldn’t be able to organize my thoughts. For some reason the place that had once been my sanctuary was making me incredibly anxious. I didn’t know if that was because of its history with Jax or because I felt guilty for not visiting my grandmother’s gravesite in so long, but either way I didn’t like it.

“I’m sorry I haven’t come to visit in such a long time,” I said quietly, speaking to a stone memorial. “I don’t even know if you’re here listening to me. I don’t even know if you’re out there at all. I guess those are just things I like to believe. They make me feel safer and they make me not fear death so much. Anyway…I’m not really in the best of places right now, grandma. I mean, I should be, right? I’m engaged to a brilliant, successful man, we have a lovely new house, I have a new job…but, despite all of that, I’m still right back where I started. This town gave me so much grief, and I suppose it was my own fault, but that doesn’t mean that the memories aren’t still there and nagging at me everyday.

“I did something bad. I wasn’t even here for two weeks and I did something horrible. I compromised my relationship the second the past came knocking on my door. What does that say about me? I’m supposed to love Alex, and I do, but then why would I do such a thing? I don’t love Jax anymore. I don’t. He’s not even Jax anymore, he’s…he’s one of them. I never minded the Sons before, but that was before I really started to see what they were. They’re a gang, they—they do bad things. They murder people. They traffic illegal weaponry and lord knows what else, and Jax is a part of that. I don’t want that in my life but I let it in anyway. I spent so many years running from that. I told him explicitly that him being involved with the Sons was the reason I was leaving him, and the second I’m back in town I take him into my home like it never mattered. I threw all those years to waste and made myself a hypocrite, and then I kicked him out again.

“I haven’t told anyone and I don’t know if I should. It’d ruin everything, not only for me, but for Alex, and I can’t do that. As sorry as I am, I love him more. So I can be sorry and he can be happy and someday I’ll forget about it and we can be happy together. Right? What happened between Jax and I was nothing. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. I know you were always a fan of Jax, but if only you could see him now, grandma. You’d hate him, too. He’s a monster. And I have to keep reminding myself of that before I let him haunt my home again. He’s a bad man. I can’t be with a bad man. I can’t have a family with a bad man, not like I can with Alex. God, I wish you were here. I need you right now. You’re the only person who ever listened.”

I sat there for a little bit longer, remembering the good times when she’d been alive. I remembered how she taught me to bake and knit and crochet and how to keep a garden. I learned things from my parents too of course, but my grandmother…she was my angel sent straight from heaven. She kept me safe and sane and she always lead me down the right path. I wanted so desperately for her to still be alive, so she could show me what path I needed to take now. I wanted a sign, a direction, just something to keep me going. I just needed her.

I stood up to put the rose carefully atop her headstone, kissing three of my fingers before pressing it to the cool granite. As I was bent over, my phone fell from my jacket pocket and bounced a few feet to the left, landing next to a tree trunk. I sighed and wandered over to it. As I was standing back up from grabbing it, someone caught my eye. Over by the pale soldier’s graves, there was a spot of black. His back was to me, but I knew who it was. He wasn’t wearing his cut, but instead just a plain black shirt and jeans. The wind ran its cool fingers through his blonde hair and I stood there in the shadows, watching him. He was visiting his father, of course he was. I wondered how often he came here anymore. I wondered if he was asking his father the same sorts of questions I’d just asked my grandmother.

I knew I shouldn’t be there anymore. Not only was it a private moment I was spying on, but it was Jax. I’d sworn to myself to stay away from him and I’d even made him promise to stay away from me. If he saw me, I’d look like a hypocrite, and there was little I hated more than looking like a hypocrite.

Unfortunately, the universe was against me that day. As I was backing away from him to slowly retreat to the safety of my car, my heel landed on a dried stick, which promptly and loudly snapped in half. Jax stood up immediately and spun around, but not before I did. I’d just got my back turned to him before he could see my face. However, I was now leaning against a tree a few feet from my grandmother’s grave, and I felt extremely awkward. He was going to know it was me, obviously. The only question that remained after that was: would he come over?

When I heard the sound of grass under shoes come up behind me, I winced. I couldn’t decide if I hadn’t wanted him to come over because of the whole SAMCRO business, or because it was Jax and I didn’t trust myself around him. Both were valid reasons and both were on my mind. I didn’t really want to talk about the second one, though.

“Ella?” he asked quietly. He was unsure, too.

I turned around, trying my best to look as innocent as possible. I slipped my phone back into my pocket, only just realizing I hadn’t done that yet.

“Jax…what are—um, hi.” I stammered.

His blue eyes fell to my grandmother’s headstone and immediately softened.

“Needed someone to talk to?” he asked.

“Y-yeah, I guess so. Sort of.” I replied. “It’s been awhile.”

“I’d say.”

I should’ve said I was leaving. No, better than that, I should’ve just left. But for some reason my stupid tongue tripped up and something entirely different came out. I wanted to slap myself.

“I take it you needed to vent your thoughts, too?” I asked, gesturing towards his father’s gravesite.

He looked down at the grass, leaning his right shoulder against the tree. He was so close to me—too close, but I didn’t move away.

“Yeah. Not sure how much good it did, though.”

Those gentle eyes flicked up to mine and chilled me. He tried to keep them hard and angry all the time, but I rarely ever had to see them that way. If I wasn’t seeing them soft and loving, I was seeing them sad and hurt. Even after all these years he still only showed me the part that he kept hidden from everyone else. I knew the leather cut was just a front; a way to scare everyone else off because he was a Son, but in front of me he was only Jax. That was all he’d ever be for me. And yet still I couldn’t see him that way anymore. I viewed him the same way everyone else did. I should feel terrible for that, and a bit of me did, but I couldn’t help it. He was dangerous now. He’d killed people and I knew it. That was all I could see in those soft eyes now and I couldn’t fix it.

“Your mom came to visit me at the school,” I blurted out. I wasn’t even sure why I said it, but I did. “She came on my first day.”

Jax sighed and shook his head. I could see the flicker of rage on his face as his lips tightened and he sneered.

“Damn it, Gemma,” he snarled. “I’m sorry. I told her to leave you alone, I did…”

“You know Gemma, Jax. If she thinks somebody’s out to hurt her son, well...she’s gonna hurt them first.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” he asked bluntly.

“N-no, no, I couldn’t do that, I just—”

“Then she had no right. She’s losing her fucking mind.”

“I hurt you once, Jackson, and I hurt you bad. That’s all it takes. She’ll never forgive me. She won’t even try. I mean, not that it matters now, but I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have a dangerous shadow show up at a high school with a gun in her purse.”

“I’ll talk to her. She won’t come near you again.” He said darkly. I almost felt bad for Gemma.

“Will you come near me?” I asked quietly.

His face slackened a bit and he didn’t speak for a moment. I could see it on his face: he knew what he was supposed to say, but it wasn’t what he wanted to say. It wasn’t what he was going to say.

“Ella, look—”

I held up my left hand, palm facing me, and made him look at it. He was puzzled. I pointed a finger at the ring on my left hand.

“Do you see that?” I asked.

He sighed in annoyance.

“It’s a ring.”

“It’s an engagement ring,” I corrected him. “I’m getting married, Jax. In a few months, I’ll be somebody’s wife. So I want you—no, I need you to let me go. Please.”

He was silent for a moment, brooding. I almost didn’t even want to hear what he had to say. I was too scared.

“Ella, you have been in my life for so long,” he finally said. “We have made so many memories. Practically my entire past involves you in some way. I can’t just erase those memories. I can’t just forget you. I can’t forget what we had. Even if you’re getting married, I can’t forget. I won’t. I don’t care. I’m sorry. I told you I’d leave you alone and…I’ve been trying. You were spying on me today, just for the record.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Anyway, that’s beside the point. Good for you if you’re happy, but that ring is just a symbol that I’ll never be truly happy for the rest of my life, because I won’t have you. Are you really happy anyway, Ella? Because if you were, I wouldn’t think you’d have let me—”

“Please, stop.” I begged.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to deny it,” He laughed incredulously. “Don’t tell me you’ve been acting like it didn’t happen.”

“I…I have a fiancé.”

“That didn’t seem to matter when you kissed me.”

“Please don’t,” I whispered. Tears were beginning to sting my eyes and spill down my cheeks, one by one.

Jax sighed, relenting a little at the sight of my emotional display. I furiously wiped the tears away but they took long enough to stop coming. It annoyed me to be crying and got me frustrated and thus more tears came. It was embarrassing.

“Ella, please. If you wanna marry this guy…well, I guess I can’t do anything about it. God, I wish I could, but I can’t. I don’t want to sacrifice your happiness, even though that should be the only thing I want to do after you did it to me. But I can’t bring myself to do it.” His voice was tinted with poison for a moment. He was still wounded, ten years later. I’d thought he’d be the first to get over it. Clearly I’d been wrong.

Nevertheless, his snide remark rubbed me the wrong way. “Do you think I didn’t sacrifice my happiness too, Jax?” I snapped. “Do you think I didn’t try my damndest to stay, even when you were becoming more and more distant? You must not remember that part. You know, the part where you were barely home and you barely spoke to me. The part where you were under so much stress you were constantly snapping at me. And despite how that broke me down everyday I stayed for as long as I could until I was nothing but a pile of rubble. Only then did I leave because not only had that club ruined you, it had ruined me, and if you weren’t going to rebuild me I was going to do it myself.”

He didn’t say anything. I could see he wanted to, though. His unspoken words danced like icy flames in his eyes, and judging by the look of it, it was a good thing he decided to hold back.

“I spent years missing you after I left. If you think I didn’t, if you think I didn’t regret it, you’re dead wrong. I regretted it as soon as I left Charming, but I couldn’t go back. You weren’t going to change, Jax. A part of me always knew you’d join SAMCRO. A part of me always knew it wasn’t just a motorcycle club. And a part of me always knew you were going to lose yourself to the darkest parts of it and I feared I wouldn’t be able to find you. And it happened. It’s still happening. I just…I couldn’t do it. Yet I spent years wishing I was with you. I looked for you in everyone I met. The better parts of you; the Jax I first fell in love with. I spent years alone because you were all I wanted.”

“I guess Alex changed that, huh?” he finally mumbled. He looked a little stunned by my words, I thought. I supposed that made sense; it was the first time he was really hearing my side of the story.

“Hardly. He wouldn’t stop asking me out until I finally said yes. Keep in mind this wasn’t too long ago. We started dating three years ago. After six years of missing you but not wanting to come back I guess I was just…exhausted. Missing you is damn exhausting. So I let him in and here we are. Right back where I started…” I sighed.

He was silent for a moment. His eyes refused to meet mine, but I was okay with that. I felt like if he looked at me, I’d be the first one to look away.

Finally, after an agonizing eternity, he spoke.

“Do you love him like you loved me?” he asked quietly.

It was a really staggering question, although I suppose I should’ve expected it. At first I didn’t know how to answer it. Rather, I knew the answer; I just didn’t know how to phrase it.

“I love him. Do I love him as recklessly and freely as I loved you? In a word, no.”

He nodded, drinking it in. I guess I expected a different reaction. Maybe I expected him to crack that grin of his, or laugh. But instead he just nodded. That was all.

“Is that why you kept the tattoo?” His eyes finally met mine and I got goosebumps.

“I…well, maybe. I don’t know. I just could never bring myself to cover it up. I still missed you. You were a good majority of my life, Jax. I guess I felt like if I covered it up or got it lasered, that’d be like wiping you from my life, and I couldn’t do that.”

He didn’t say anything. He just nodded again.

“Can I ask you why you kept yours?” I murmured.

“The same reason, kind of. I couldn’t do that to you, but I also didn’t want to. A part of me always knew you’d come back, and when you did, I was going to be waiting. I told you, I tried to date other people; I tried to fall in love with them, even, but I couldn’t do it. You were the only one, Ella. If I got rid of it, I’d only be lying to myself.” He responded bleakly.

“Right, yeah,” I mumbled. Every time he talked about his misadventures in dating after me it was like he was driving a stake even deeper into my heart. It made me feel bad. I didn’t want to feel anything for him.

“What about Alex?” he asked suddenly, kicking the base of the tree with the toe of his shoe.

“What about him?”

“Well hasn’t he seen your ink? Didn’t he ask about it? I would’ve.”

I had to smirk because I knew he would’ve. Even if he was being his usual detached self after joining SAMCRO, he could still be very possessive sometimes. Some days it was flattering, other days it was a fight. I remembered it all very well.

I shrugged. “He’s never really asked. I don’t think he cares. It wasn’t the J on my hip that put the ring on my finger.”

I could see the poison in my words injure him. He tucked his annoyance away pretty quickly, though.

Much to my surprise, it was Jax who said he had to leave first. Granted, I was close to uttering the words when he beat me to it, but I was still shocked about it. Maybe he was finally getting the point. Or maybe the more he talked with me the more he realized that he’d been dwelling too much on the idea of who I was. Because I wasn’t the naïve girl who fell in love too fast anymore; I was a fully-grown woman with a career, a house, a fiancé, and responsibilities. I was far more independent now than I had been with Jax. Maybe he didn’t like it. Maybe it was enough to push him to finally move on. The idea was bittersweet.

“I gotta go. I’ve got a meeting with that club you hate so much.” He gave me a sour smile.

“Ah, say no more. Bye, Jax.” I turned to walk away from him.

I should’ve seen it coming. I mean I really should’ve seen it coming. He couldn’t just let me have my moment and walk away. He had to keep me there for one more gruelling minute. He had to force me to look at the eyes I’d repeatedly fallen in love with all those years ago and listen to that soft tone of voice he used with me.

“I talked to her while you were gone,” he said, gesturing towards my grandmother’s grave. “I told her you’d come back someday.”

I looked at the weathered headstone and didn’t say a word. My tongue felt like a brick in my mouth.

“I’m sorry you’re more rooted in this town than you ever wanted to be. I’m sorry we both are. If things had been different, Ella, I would’ve left with you. I would’ve gone halfway around the world with you if you took my hand and led me there. But things aren’t different. This is how they are. We’re stuck here together for an unknown amount of time. So please, before you dismiss me again, think about that. Think about that and about how we’ve both changed, and how much better it’d be if we just got along and became friends again. I can be friends with you, Ella. I’m ready to be friends with you. The question is, are you ready to be friends with me?”

He left, and his loaded question hung in the air like a blanket of thick fog. Was I ready to be friends with him? Was it possible for me to not become attracted to him again, as I had before, and pursue a relationship with him? That was what he had meant. He’d said he could be just friends with me, but I didn’t believe him. He’d kissed me first the other night, not the other way around. But the more I thought about it and the more I told myself I could be just friends with Jax with absolutely no romantic implications, the less I believed myself, too.