The first of hopefully many drabbles written in the universe of my fanfiction Old Ghosts done as part of a drabble challenge I'm doing.
Characters: Tara Larkin (Knowles), Craig Larkin, Abel and Thomas Larkin (Teller) and Faye Larkin with mentions of Chibs, Fiona, Jax and Juice.
In the darkness she can make out Jax standing over her with a sharp knife. For a moment she found it strange that she could see him, but that thought was quickly overshadowed by the knowledge that he was there to finish off what he started all those years ago. Immediately she began clawing at him trying to fight for her life.
Instead of letting her go, "Jax" began shaking her. "Tara, wake up! Wake up Love!"
The deep Irish accent of the voice was the first thing that reminded her that the man holding her wasn't Jax. It wasn't the first time she'd had horrible nightmares dealing with the trauma she'd been dealt and Craig, the man she now shared her life with, had been witness to far more incidents than she'd like to admit, but it had been almost a year since her last nightmare and it had been a decade since the incident that caused them.
Slowly, Tara found herself coming back to her senses and immediately found herself reaching for Craig's face, both wanting to discover if she'd inflicted any minor injuries on him and to prove to her still raging brain that he was indeed still real.
The moment her fingers ghosted over the bridge of his nose Craig cried out in obviously fake horror. "You took it!"
The sole purpose behind his claim was to bring her back into her mind and it almost immediately worked as Tara felt herself cracking a smile.
"Do you want to talk about what just happened?" Craig inquired, snapping back into concerned husband mode.
Tara sighed in response. "I'm so stupid for still having these dreams. He's been gone for quite a while now. This shouldn't even be an issue anymore."
"You're not stupid Tara, you're an incredibly strong, intelligent woman who's been through too many bad things in life."
Thinking for a second Tara nodded "I think right now I'm just tired. I mean that literally, any chance we can go back to sleep?"
Beside her she felt Craig shift as he looked at the bedside clock. "I think we can squeeze in a few more hours before the house turns to anarchy."
In the next few hours Tara slept peacefully until the clock sounded it's alarm announcing the time as five-thirty.
After a decade of blindness she'd been able to regain much of the independence she'd had while able to see, but not a day went by that she didn't value the little ways Craig helped her.
By six they were in the kitchen working together to make what Craig called a well rounded Irish breakfast and Tara called only practical because they lived with a two hungry growing lads that would consume an entire normal breakfast before their younger sister even got a single bite.
Like clockwork, the moment Tara had settled down with her own plate and a cup of hot tea, from the back of the house came the sound of three sets of footsteps followed by the voices of their owners.
"Tell Tommy I didn't steal his stupid Batman sweater!" thirteen year old Abel grumbled while grabbing a plate out of the cabinet.
"Well if you didn't steal it, where is it?" twelve year old Thomas retorted.
"Don't call your brother's favorite sweater stupid and check the laundry basket." Tara and Craig said almost in unison.
At the same moment seven year old Faye, the only biological child of both Craig and Tara, came trailing into the room behind her brothers. "Da, can you do my hair in braids?"
"Not until after you eat your breakfast Sweet Bun," Craig chuckled in response.
As Abel and Faye settled with their plates Thomas returned from the laundry room pulling on his favorite sweater.
"Told you I wouldn't steal it," Abel muttered before returning to completely focusing on his food.
However, as usual Faye was trying to carry on a complete conversation around bites of food. "Uncle Filip said I can bottle feed the new baby goat. Did you know baby goats are called kids? And Aunt Fiona put a diaper on it then Uncle Filip told me it was just like diapers the Jews wore one time."
"The Jews?" Tara cut off her daughter's train of babbling. What she had just said didn't sound like something her brother-in-law would have ever said but it took her a second to realize what her daughter actually meant as the memory of David Hale calling her to tell her that he'd found Juan Carlos "Juice" Ortiz lying outside the police station wearing a diaper. "Faye, your uncle and I once knew a man named Juice. I think that's who he was talking about."
"Oh, well why didn't his parents give him a normal name?"
The tone of confusion in the seven year old's voice made Tara laugh. It was true, it had been a decade since she'd left Charming and she didn't think there was any reason to ever go back, but not all memories from that time were bad memories, and the memory of the blonde biker that had nearly murdered her, a memory was all he was now and memories only held power if you let them.