Chapter Text
The bell rang above the door of the convenience store as Jamie Fraser entered, clad in his Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club jacket and baggy jeans. His auburn curls were slicked back away from his face, cascading down and resting just above his shoulders.
He nodded to the clerk, a young blonde woman dressed in cutoff jeans and a skimpy tank top. "Hey Jamie," she said, giving him a flirty look.
"Hey lass," he replied dismissively, heading for the section of refrigerated drinks. He pulled a Coke out and turned to return to the counter, grabbing a pack of condoms off a nearby display on the way. A small rack of children's books caught his eye and he paused, picking up a copy of Good Night Moon and thumbing through it. Smiling slightly, a slight curl of his lip, he replaced the book and set his soda on the counter. "Pack of smokes, too. Thanks."
The girl turned to retrieve the cigarettes while Jamie stared out the pane glass absent-mindedly. In the distance he could see a fire blazing and his stomach dropped as he realized it was in the direction of the Warehouse that SAMCWRO used to store guns and other contraband. "Shit," he said under his breath and turned his gaze back to the counter to pay. As he reached in his back pocket to pull out his wallet, he saw the clerk slip the book he had been looking at into the bag. "It was my favorite too," she said with a shrug, taking the twenty from his hand.
"Keep the change," he said, grabbing the bag and heading out the door. He walked over to his bike in two strides and strapped on his helmet while mounting it in one smooth motion. He revved the engine and took off, heading to the MacKenzie Fraser Auto Shop to find out what was happening.
***
He rode up to the garage, arriving just as his mother's car was pulling out. He waved and stopped his bike as she rolled down the window. "Hey lad," she said, pushing her sunglasses down on her nose.
"Hi, Ma. Have ye heard from my junkie ex-wife lately?"
"No, have you?"
"No, she willna answer my calls. She's supposed to be sending me the doctor's bills, but I havena seen one in weeks," his voice was a balance of annoyance and concern. It was typical for Laoghaire to drop off the face of the earth like this, but she was thirty weeks pregnant and supposedly staying clean. Her lack of contact with him could be out of pure spite or it could mean she was off the wagon again.
"I'll stop by yer house on my way home and check on her. And dinna forget to go to the old storage unit and see if ye can find any useful baby things in there," she replied, biting her tongue so as to not give her opinion on her ex-daughter in law. "Will ye come for dinner tonight? I'll have all the guys over and Dougal can grill steaks."
"Sounds great, ma. See ye then." He leaned into the car to kiss her on the cheek before riding away to park his bike in the usual spot.
Inside the clubhouse, Willie, the Prospect more often known as Half-Sack, was cleaning some unidentifiable substance off the floor. The main room smelled as it always did, like stale beer, cigarette smoke, and pussy. Jamie approached Half-Sack and asked him to fill him in on what he knew of the explosion. "Whole warehouse is gone, is all I know, Jamie. All the guns are gone, too. Dougal and the guys will be back soon and they can give you more info."
As if on cue, Dougal MacKenzie entered the clubhouse followed by Rupert and Angus. Dougal, Jamie's stepfather, was a balding man with a gray beard and an ever-present scowl on his face. He stood head and shoulders over his companions and had the type of presence which commanded every room he entered. Rupert, a jovial, stocky man in his 50s approached Jamie and clapped him on the back, "Jamie lad, yer just the person we wanted to see."
"Aye, what's going on?" Jamie asked.
Angus followed behind Rupert, his small wiry frame vibrating with nervous energy. "Grant's men. They took all our guns that were meant for Sandringham and then blew up the goddamn warehouse."
"What the fuck?" Jamie said angrily, looking at Dougal for answers. "What are we gonna do about Sandringham now?"
Dougal moseyed up to Jamie, in no particular hurry. "I already talked tae Sandringham and bought us wee bit o' time. I want ye to get in touch wi' Ian. Fergus is gonna find out where the hell they're storing the guns. We need Ian to help with the raid and the pyrotechnics."
"Aye. I'll find him and get him on board." Jamie answered.
***
He found Ian at his home, fixing his old Chevy in the driveway. As Jamie pulled his bike to the side of the curb and approached him, he noticed Jenny, Ian's wife, glaring at him from the front window. Jamie gave a friendly wave and the curtain flickered closed, Jenny disappearing into the house.
Jamie sauntered up to the car where his best friend's head was buried under the hood. Leaning down, he ducked his head under the hood with him. Ian gave him a quick glance. "What do ye want, Jamie?" he asked suspiciously.
"Oh, I'm doin' fine, thanks for askin'" Jamie replied.
Ian stood up slowly, careful of his head. His normally thin frame looked even slighter than usual his long dark blonde hair was pulled back in a haphazard, unbrushed ponytail at the nape of his neck. Leaning against the car, he wiped his hands on a filthy rag and gave Jamie a weary look.
Jamie conceded that he was there to ask for something. He filled Ian in on what had gone down and what he was needed for. Ian eyed him skeptically. "I dinna ken, Jamie. I promised Jenny I would stay out of this shit with the club. Christ, I just got out of prison. I spent five years in that hell hole for doing the same shite yer askin me to do right now."
"Ian, I ken yer tryin to keep yer nose clean," Jamie replied. "And I wouldna be askin ye if it wasna important. We need those guns or we're going to be in a world of hurt with Sandringham's club. And Dougal's no likely to keep ye on his payroll if ye don't start showing up once in a while."
Ian's face contorted with anger. "So, after all our years of friendship, this is what it comes down to aye? Threats? Blackmail?"
Jamie remained calm. "I'm no threatenin ye, mo charaid ; I'm tellin ye how it is. Ye've got a wife and two bairns to support and ye're makin minimum wage workin at that fecking factory. If the club loses those guns, we'll be takin a huge financial hit. Who do ye think is gonna be the first one to get cut from the payroll? The guys who are workin every job, or the guy who hasna been around since he got back?"
Ian sighed, resigned. "Alright, I'll do it, but yer goin tae have tae cover for me wi' Jenny."
Jamie put his hand out to clasp Ian's, and he leaned in and patted him on the back. "I got yer back. Now get yer fireworks together so they're ready when Dougal gives the word."
***
An hour later, Jamie was sorting through the old storage unit. It was piled floor to ceiling with junk from his childhood. Swings and highchairs and walkers tangled together in giant heaps on top of boxes labeled onesies and baby books . Most of the items looked to be in good shape.
He had borrowed a truck from the garage and started carefully extracting and inspecting each item before placing it in the truck. After getting some of the bigger items in, he began sorting through some of the boxes. He came across one labeled Brian MISC , and his heart jumped into his throat at the sight of his father's name. Abandoning the rest, he opened this box and started to rummage through it. Various legal documents and letters made up most of the contents, except for one large manila envelope. This he opened and when he tipped it upside down to loosen the contents, a few photographs floated out. He handled each one carefully.
His mother, tall and queenly, and very pregnant, on her wedding day; her best friend Gillian off to her left. His Da stood facing her, their hands clasped together, with Dougal on his right.
His Da lying on an old couch, shirtless, his dark hair messy and damp with sweat. On his chest lay an infant with wisps of red hair, also sleeping. Jamie turned the picture over. The date written on the back was 1978 and he realized this was a picture of him and his Da.
Willie, his brother, at about three years old, standing next to Jamie, their Da standing behind them. All three were eating ice cream cones and laughing.
Jamie and Willie sitting on their Da's motorcycle together, grinning from ear to ear at the privilege. Brian Fraser stood next to them, one hand on each of their shoulders.
Jamie wiped away a tear and set the pictures aside. He pulled out the rest of the contents of the envelope. It was a thick pile of typewritten pages, three-hole punched and bound with small metal brackets. The Life and Death of SAMCWRO: How the White Roses Lost Their Way by Brian Fraser. Jamie began thumbing through it but was interrupted by his cell phone. He rolled his eyes; it was his mother again. “Yeah?” he answered.
“Jamie,” Ellen said, the urgency thick in her voice. “Ye need to come to St Mary’s right now. It’s Laoghaire.”
“Ma, what happened?”
“Just come,” she commanded, hanging up the phone.
Jamie’s mind raced. Laoghaire. The baby. Oh Christ. He grabbed the box of his father’s things, stuffed the pictures and envelope back in, and headed to the truck, locking the storage unit behind him. The tires squealed as he made his way to the hospital.
***
The elevator doors opened, and Jamie ran into the hallway toward the maternity ward. He could hear his mother pacing the hall before he saw her, the familiar click of her boots on the linoleum. As he approached her she turned to him, red hair perfectly coifed and blue eyes blazing. She grabbed him, pulling him into the waiting room. “Sit down,” she told him.
“No, ma. Tell me what happened. Now.”
“Sit.”
“Dammit Ma. Just tell me!”
“Fine,” she said. Her voice was thick with disdain and she spoke closer to Jamie’s face than she needed to. “That junkie whore ex-wife of yours couldn’t stay clean. She shot herself up and nearly killed herself. I had to find her bleeding on the goddamn kitchen floor.” She turned away, too angry to even look at her son any longer.
“The child?” Jamie pleaded. He grabbed her arm and turned her back around; he could see the tears she was fighting back. At least half the time that Ellen MacKenzie was spitting venom at you she was actually just scared or miserable, not that she would ever admit it. “Ma. What happened to the baby?”
She breathed out shakily. “They had to do an emergency c-section. I’m still waiting on the doctor to find out if he made it.” She sat down cautiously; her knees unsteady.
Jamie took the seat next to her and put his head in his hands. Ellen rubbed his back as they sat in silence. They were alone in the waiting room, which was one small mercy. The clock on the wall ticked the seconds by loudly; there were no other sounds in the room, though the muted sounds of the hospital buzzed in the background. Jamie stared ahead waiting for news of his son.
The door clicked, and both Jamie and Ellen snapped out of their reveries and stood. That was when Jamie’s heart dropped for the second time since he’d gotten the call from his mother. The doctor was Claire, his childhood sweetheart, the one who had broke his heart into a million pieces that had never fully healed. He knew she had returned to Leoch to work in the hospital, but this was the first time he had seen her since her arrival about a month before. She wore green scrubs and Jamie felt briefly ashamed to realize that he was wondering what her ass looked like under her white coat. She still wore her scrub cap, but Jamie could see the wild curls starting to rebel, peeking out along her face. She was so heartbreakingly beautiful that he momentarily forgot his purpose in being there.
Reality came crashing down, though, as he caught pieces of what she was saying: ten weeks early, hole in his stomach, heart defect. Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer and interrupted her. “Is he going to live?”
Claire looked him directly in the eye, her amber eyes soft with the sympathy she tried to hide with her clinical tone. “Dr. Abernathy puts his chance of survival at about 20%. I’d say that’s optimistic.”
His anger rose and the urge to hit something was overwhelming. Instead, he turned on his heel and ran toward the elevator bank, leaving his mother to deal with the doctors and Laoghaire and any other shit that he just couldn’t handle.
***
Jamie pulled the truck in front of a tiny dive bar on the outskirts of town. Throwing it into park, he stepped out, slamming the door behind him.
He entered the dim, quiet bar, his eyes scanning the room until they found his target, a skinny waste of a man in a filthy white t-shirt and sagging jeans, playing pool. "DONNER!" he bellowed. Donner turned around but Jamie was on him before he even had a chance to see what was coming. Within seconds Jamie had the dealer's face smashed into the green felt, arm bent behind his back. He held the pool stick up to Donner's face and demanded, "Tell me ye sold heroin to my PREGNANT ex-wife!"
Donner sputtered, his lips half crushed into the pool table, "I don't know what you're talking about man."
Jamie took the tip of the cue and slowly pushed it into one of Donner's nostrils. "TELL ME... that ye sold heroin to my pregnant ex-wife. And if I have tae ask ye again, this pool stick is gonna be in your fecking brains."
"I-I-I didn't know she was yer ex-wife, Fraser. I swear."
Jamie pulled the man up and held him by the shirt. "Ye son of a bitch." WHACK! His fist met Donner's nose. "Ye canna sell drugs in Leoch and ye ken that well." WHACK! Another blow, this one to the jaw. "And if I ever find out ye so much as glance in her direction again," WHACK! This one in the temple. "I'll fecking kill ye." As a final blow, he smacked his head into Donner’s, and he went down like a rag doll. Jamie kicked him once for good measure and then stormed out of the bar.
He made it about a mile before he saw the lights flashing in the rear view.
***
The next morning, Claire was doing rounds when she ran into Ellen. "How's the baby?" Ellen asked.
"I'm glad you're here," Claire responded, gesturing to a set of chairs in the hallway. "Though, I do wish Jamie was here as well. Where is he?"
"He got into a bit of a stramash with the dealer who sold Laoghaire the drugs. He's currently sleeping it off in a jail cell," Ellen answered nonchalantly.
"Wonderful," Claire replied, her voice thick with sarcasm. "Well, listen, the baby survived the first surgery last night, but it was hard on his system. We need to do the heart surgery today, before he gets any weaker."
Ellen nodded, her veneer cracking. She swallowed hard, "Do what ye have to do, doc."
"All right then. We'll schedule the surgery for later today. Is anybody going to get Jamie out of jail?"
"Eventually," Ellen shrugged. "Dougal's pissed at him because he missed a big job last night. Might be better if Jamie's locked up fer now."
Claire sighed and rolled her eyes. "I forgot how MacKenzie justice works."
"Listen, Doc ," Ellen said, standing. "Why don't ye stick to the doctorin' and let me worry about my son."
"Whatever you say, Ellen." Claire stood and brushed past her but Ellen grabbed her arm to stop her.
"Don't ye dare come back to this town and act like yer better than us." Ellen reached around to Claire’s back and lifted the hem of her scrub top up, revealing a SAMCWRO tramp stamp. "Yer just like the rest of us, and ye've got the brand to prove it."
Claire wrenched out of her grasp and pulled her top back down. "I keep it to remind me of who I was, so that I never go back to being that girl."
"Ye can take the girl away from the bikes,” Ellen said, walking away in the other direction, “But ye canna take the biker out of the girl.”
“Bitch,” Claire said, just loud enough for Ellen to hear before turning on her heel and walking away.
***
Hours later, Jamie sat on the cot in his cell, stewing. Dougal had stopped by earlier and informed him that since he missed the raid on the Grants last night, he could “rot in the cell” until Dougal saw fit to bail him out. He had expressly forbidden Ellen or any of the other guys to bail him out either.
The jail cell really wasn’t so bad. The accommodations at the Leoch Police Station were comfortable enough and when the police chief, John Grey, wasn’t busy he would open up the cell and play chess with Jamie. Grey was one of those small-town police chiefs whose presence was stitched into the very fabric of the town, and he was more concerned about what was good for the place than following the actual law. At sixty years old, he had held the position of chief for the last 20, and Jamie had grown up being chased through alleys by him, dragged home by the collar of his shirt by him, and, more times than he could count, being thrown into the very cell that he was currently inhabiting by him.
But Grey had been called away for the rest of the afternoon, and Jamie was stuck with Randall, the piece of shit deputy chief who held his position only because of his influential older brother’s place on the Leoch Town Council. Jamie had grown up alongside Jack Randall, graduated high school with him, but they had run in completely different crowds, to say the very least. As an adult, Randall seemed hell-bent on driving SAMCWRO out of town. That idiot could never see the forest through the trees , Jamie often thought about him. He had a special distaste for Jamie, though there had never been any particular bad blood between the two of them.
Still, Randall had been kept busy with paperwork most of the afternoon, leaving Jamie to his own devices, and the only thing he had to do was to think about what a colossal fuck up he was. Couldn’t keep his best friend safe. Couldn’t keep his ex-wife safe. Couldn’t keep his newborn son safe. Everything he did, every move he made seemed to make things worse for everybody, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that his stepfather liked it that way. As long as Jamie was constantly off balance, constantly trying to keep his life on an even keel, Dougal could keep him in check. As long as Jamie didn’t have time to focus on club improvements, Dougal could continue to run his own agenda roughshod over everyone else.
He stood and paced, trying to decide what his first move was going to be when he was finally released. Nobody had brought him news of his son, and he regretted to the marrow of his bone that he had run out of that hospital instead of seeing him. Oh Christ , what if he dies and I never get to see him? He sat back down on the cot, bringing his knees up to his chest and folding his arms over his knees, he allowed himself to cry quietly into them.
He must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing he knew he heard the screech of the cell door opening. He looked up to see Grey stepping aside revealing Claire standing behind him, still in her scrubs. She nodded at Grey, who turned and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Claire sat on the cot next to Jamie, not quite touching him, and stared straight ahead. After a long silence she said quietly, “I bailed you out. Please don’t make me regret that.”
“I willna,” he responded just as quietly, looking at his hands. Neither spoke for a few minutes before Jamie finally cleared his throat and asked, “My son?”
She nodded, still staring ahead. “He’s alive. Had both his surgeries and he made it. He’s strong, Jamie. Much stronger than I thought. I think he’s going to make it.”
Jamie rubbed his face with his hands and began to weep quietly. “Thank Christ. Oh, thank Christ. Thank ye, Claire.”
She reached over and placed a hand tentatively on his. “Laoghaire OD’d again. Somebody snuck enough heroin to kill a horse into her hospital room.”
“Is she --?”
“No. She made it. She’s in sedated detox right now. She’s probably going to have her parental rights removed. Are you still married to her, Jamie?” Claire asked, the last question barely audible.
“No. We divorced almost a year ago. She got clean and we tried to make it work again, but it was a complete disaster.”
“At least one good thing came out of it,” Claire replied.
“Aye. Aye, it did,” he said, choking up again. “William. His name is William.”
It was Claire’s turn for silent tears. She had grown up with Jamie. His brother Willie had been the annoying little brother, following them around as soon as he could walk. She had been with Jamie, hiding in the treehouse the day that Willie was born and had held him in that same treehouse six years later when Willie died. She had lost a brother that day too, and neither she nor Jamie were ever the same after that day.
She gave his hand a quick squeeze and stood. “Go home and get cleaned up. And then go to the hospital to meet your son,” she said, looking in his eyes for the first time since she had arrived. And then she turned and walked out.