*Author's Note*: I own nothing from King Arthur except my characters Tegan, Sapphire, Diana, Iona and Niamh (for pronunciation click on the link below it's where i found most of the names.) Reviews and grammar fanatics (I don't like the term grammar nazi, I feel it's a little harsh) are welcome, I know my grammar is sometimes horrible. I make no guarantee's that I will correct it in a timely fashion though. :P Now onto the story.
Here's the link I promised you. Enjoy.
irish-girl-names
Chapter One. Tegan P.O.V.
"Tegan…Tegan…TEGAN!" came a sing-song voice then a yell right before a body banged open the door and jumped onto the petite red head hiding under the covers of her small dorm room bed. The girl groaned under the covers at her roommate and best friend.
"Iona…. let me sleep."
Tegan rolled over and away from her peppy friend and tried to hide further under the covers. The little blonde pulled the blankets away and glared at Tegan.
"You promised you would come party with us tonight, there's a new club that just opened up and the other girls are dying to go and we want you with us tonight, you've bailed on us every other night so you are coming, now GET UP!"
Tegan peaked her head out at the blonde as she crossed her arms and stood over her friends' bed until Tegan finally gave in.
"Fine, I'm up, but you know I have nothing to wear Pax, you know I'm not much of a partier."
"Not to worry hun Fire, Di, Tempest and I have got you covered." Iona stated as a bright smile lit up her face.
Tegan finally rolled all the way over and sat up in her bed, just in time for Iona to smack her in the face with a blue crop top that she had thrown over her shoulder. Iona may not be the most intimidating girl given her stature and thin dancer's build, but her aim was something you did not want to tangle with. Tegan suppressed a giggle as she remembered the rubber band and pen crossbow-shooting contest Pax had gotten into with a classmate not so very long ago, and the surprised and impressed looks when the tiny girl had managed to nail her final target. A bee that was flying around the classroom. She had nailed it in one shot without even trying.
"Wear that" Iona said, pointing to the royal blue top she had just flung at Tegan, "show off that sexy toned stomach of yours hun," she giggled "the rest of us are, now where is that black skirt with the slit running up to your thigh? The one you wore last week?" Iona asked over her shoulder as she turned back around to face Tegan's closet and began rummaging through the pile of clothes that had accumulated at the base of her closet floor.
Tegan stood and held up the blue top looking in the mirror at her messy bed head hair and her rumpled blue pajamas pants. She wasn't entirely sure about showing off her recently toned muscles, she was still largely uncomfortable with her body, seeing herself as still the mildly chubby girl who couldn't run a mile in under 15 minutes. She sighed as she held up the top again, she had worked hard to change her body, to look better, feel better and be healthy again. This was the best she had ever looked in her life, better than even when she was still considered a princess and had a daily personal trainer, and her newfound friends that she had made in her three years of college had been with her every step of the way. It was a much more satisfying feeling, working to improve herself because she wanted to, not because she was forced to by her former family. Tegan dropped the top on the bed, grabbed a towel off the hook and padded into the bathroom for a shower, leaving Iona to search through the multitude of clothes scattered about the room.
Ten minutes later Tegan emerged from the shower with a fluffy towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her hair. Iona was now rummaging through the bin of shoes Tegan had usually hidden under her bed, searching for the final piece to the outfit she had laid out for Tegan. She had found the black floor length skirt with the slit running up the left side, stopping about mid-thigh. It was placed on the bed next to the crop top that Tegan had set down minutes before, next to the hair dryer and Tegan's make-up. Tegan shook her head and grinned, her friend was always ever eager and bubbly and in that enthusiasm she frequently neglected to recognize personal space and boundaries, she always meant well though.
Tegan stepped over to the dresser and pulled out her favorite black push-up bra that she had just gotten from Victoria's Secret, and the matching panties. Weird as it may be, but Tegan was proud of herself when she made the purchase…it was the first pair of lingerie or non-Target brand underwear that she had been able to afford and bought with the money she had earned on her own. She had never needed to hold a job before she cut herself from her family; they had given her everything and treated her like a princess, as she was only girl in the family. That was all gone now though.
She just pulled on her bra and panties and skirt on when she heard Iona's triumphant cry from the floor across the room. Iona held her hands above her head smiling in satisfaction at having successfully found the pair of strappy sling back heels she wanted Tegan to wear. The same heels that all the girls had a pair of in different colors that they all lovingly referred to as their "stripper" heels, Tegan's were black. She smiled as the memory flashed through her mind of when all five friends had all gone shopping and decided on impulse that they should all get the same thing. It was a little childish in hindsight but they all had wanted something physical to represent their growing bonds of friendship. They were all wearing the heels tonight it seemed as Tegan took in Iona's appearance and noticed that she was already wearing her bright red ones.
'Why am I not surprised?' Tegan thought as she eyed her blonde friend and rolled her eyes when Iona began her attempt at a glare saying "Don't even think about not wearing them Tegan, Di, Fire, Tempy and I are all wearing ours so you have no choice." The tiny blonde huffed and crossed her arms still trying to glare at Tegan.
Tegan tried and failed to hide her laughter at Iona's attempt to intimidate her, 'oh if only you knew Pax, than you wouldn't try to intimidate me' Tegan thought. 'If only you knew the things I've seen, learned and done…if only.'
Tegan shook her head, and laughed at Iona's glaring, ridding herself of the dark thoughts that were entering her mind and saying "Pax you shouldn't glare, it doesn't suit your pretty face."
Iona sighed and dropped her arms, letting her head fall to stare at the floor. "Nothing ever scares or intimidates you does it?" She asked looking back up into Tegan's eyes. Tegan knew what she was looking for, but Tegan couldn't show her, she couldn't show anyone, yes they were friends but Tegan couldn't let anyone past those defenses.
Tegan knew that Pax was looking for any hint, any slight indication of fear, but all Tegan could do was mask her face, shake her head no and smile at the girl who tried so hard to prove she was just as tough as the other girls when really she was just a sweetheart and the best of them all. It was Iona who had brought the reclusive Tegan into their now very closely-knit group. They were all friends, more like sisters creating their own new little family, but Tegan still was a little distant from the others, more of an outcast. The black cat of their family still loved but doesn't quite fit in totally.
It was because of Tegan's past. She had been terrified to make friends; terrified that her blood family would find her and then take any friends she made and hurt them to get revenge on her for turning most of her family in to the FBI.
She had been closed off, she refused to accept or be accepted by anyone, out of fear that they would get hurt because of her. But Iona wouldn't quit and eventually the girl had gotten Tegan to open up somewhat and, after resolving the disputes between Tegan and Niamh, Tegan had been fully enveloped into the group. Now they knew almost everything about Tegan, except for some of her darkest secrets that she told no one for fear they would start to see her as a monster of a person, but the other girls knew the rest of her story and they accepted her for it, even the darkness that she had revealed. Even Niamh understood Tegan's reasons for betraying her family when she heard what Tegan had been subjected to.
The two mob princesses had become friends with each other because of Iona who, though loving, had forced them to hear each other out and not alert Tegan's East Coast family of her whereabouts until Niamh knew why Tegan had done what she did. Tegan's handler had been pissed when he found out that Iona and eventually the rest of the girls had found out her real name and history. He would be so pissed when she gave him the slip tonight so she could sneak out with her friends instead of going to their weekly meeting. Avoiding Jonathan was something she had gotten frustratingly (according to Jonathan) good at.
Tegan was a part of the Witness Protection Program now, has been since she was 18 when she turn against her family and testified against most of them. It was because of her that her grandfather, her father, her aunt, two of her cousins, a multitude of other "cousins" and her two older brothers were now in jail. Her two younger brothers had gotten off with only a 6-month mandatory house arrest sentence on account of the fact that they were still minors. Tegan sighed; they probably hated her too, though they had never been as big of a threat as her two older brothers.
Her family was the Irish mob gang of the East Coast. They ran Boston and Philadelphia, taking over after the Italians moved up to New Jersey and New York. Her family was not nearly as infamous or well known, after all The Godfather, and the more recent The Family, were about the Italians in New York, not as well known but twice as ruthless and just as resourceful.
Each mob, gang, mafia, whatever they decide to call themselves, has a particular specialty though all the families run their towns or districts in largely the same way. The Italians in New York and New Jersey are specialists at infiltrating government positions and paying off the police force. The Irish out of Chicago were con artists primarily, which is part of why they were so dangerous for businesses in particular. The Russians on the West Coast…well no one really knew exactly what their specialty was, they drabbled in a little bit of everything. But all of the families knew of each other, many in fact contracted with each other for the use of a certain skill set by either the family in general or a particular member of the family.
Tegan's branch of the Irish family, in particular, they were known as the Torturers. That was their specialty. Most of their work was contracted by the Italian families that either wanted in or were in the political realm of the city. Her family, as they liked to put it, obtained information for them.
When Tegan had turned 10 her father, grandfather, mother and uncles had started to teach her the family business. Their art. How to hurt someone without ever laying a finger on them. And Tegan had learned, she had been too terrified by this new part of her family that she had never known before not to learn. So she detached herself from it and became the best torturers of her generation in her family. She had stopped caring. She never grew to like it as so many of her family members did, but she lost the ability to care about the poor souls she had to inflict the pain and suffering on. It was her only defense mechanism, otherwise she would have collapsed from the weight of the knowledge of what she had been forced to learn and forced to practice. She hated her families "art" and soon began to hate them and herself.
Tegan had never told her friends this part of her history. She was too afraid that they wouldn't understand. That they wouldn't be able to see that it was the only way she could protect her mental sanity. She didn't want to hurt them with the knowledge that she was in fact a horrible human being because, after awhile, she couldn't make herself care.
Her parents had been proud of her when they saw how ruthless she had become; they called her their little Irish Princess prodigy. Tegan's father had been so proud of her, proud to the point that her older brothers had become increasingly jealous. When she was still young and just beginning to be the subject of their father's praise, they did not bother her. She only saw them as her brothers, not as the jealous potential killers they were slowing becoming. As the oldest her brother Keegan stood to inherit everything from their father when he retired, Keegan would have all the power of the family and their "kingdom" as she had once called it, at his fingertips. Her other older brother Aidan was betrothed to the daughter of the head of the family in Boston as he had no sons and after many successful contracts between the two families had grown to like Aidan. Her two younger brothers had just begun to learn the family business when she turned against them and went to the FBI.
It started when she was promised to at the age of 16 to the heir of one of the Italian families with which her family had worked closely for some time. She had never met the boy, but he was 20, almost a full four years older than she was. When they first met, two years later just before she turned 18, her family had dressed her up and forced her at the end of the night into his bed.
Tegan still shudders at the memories from that night a little over three years ago. How she had begged, almost on her knees, for her family not to make her do this, how she did not want this drunken Italian to take her in his bed, how she had only just met him, how she did not love him could not ever love him or marry him. Tegan begged her mother who just looked away and refused to see her daughter's tears and hear her plights, knowing that it must happen eventually, just as it happened to her. Her mother could not help her, could not even look at her, neither could her father. The union of the two families that her marriage would bring and the power it would bring with it, if she pleased the Italian princeling, was too important if her family was to maintain their prestige and control over the city.
She had screamed at them then, when her brothers began to force her into the room. Tegan begged her older brothers to help her, but their jealousy had made them hate her and it was Keegan and Aidan who locked the chains on her wrists, chaining her to the bed so she couldn't fight back. It was then that Tegan saw the depth of their hatred for their prodigy princess little sister. It was then that they showed her the beaten, bloody and broken body of her best friend, Sean Murphy, a boy that they knew she had feelings for. It was after that, that the Italian princeling came into the bedroom and she had no means of fighting back or of escape.
The next morning, after she had rubbed her wrists raw and had torn open the skin from forcing her wrists and hands through the manacles, she escaped. It had taken her almost all night after the princeling left, but, with her wrists bleeding, her dress torn and rumpled and blood on her thighs, she ran to the FBI building in the center of town and sealed her fate with her newly forged hate for her family and what they had forced her to do.
Tegan shuddered at the memory as she was brought back to reality by the snapping of Iona's fingers in her face.
"Hello? Tegan? Anybody home?" Iona began waving her hand in front of Tegan's face.
"Lila Tegan O'Rour…" Tegan slapped her hand over Iona's mouth with lightning speed before she could finish and glared hard at the little blonde. A glare that could actually make grown men cower in fear.
"Shh! Pax" Tegan took a deep calming breath and removed her hand from her best friend's mouth before continuing "You can't say that name. Lila Tegan O'Rourke is dead, there is only Tegan Rose Smith, born and bred in Boise, Idaho with no idea of who the families O'Rourke and Bertolini are. No idea that the mob and the mafia still exist. Got it?" When Iona nodded her head Tegan released her hold on her friend and stopped glaring.
"Pax I'm sorry but I can't afford any slips, the entirety of the Irish and Italian families are out to get Lila remember? If any of them find her, she's a dead woman."
Tegan looked at her friend straight in the eyes and allowed Pax to see a small glimmer of the fear she felt every day since she had walked out of that house and into the FBI. Iona nodded her head again in understanding and as an apology for her slip of the tongue. She grabbed Tegan, who was now fully dressed and ready to party, with one hand and Tegan's violin case with another, and with a smile the two girls left the room and met up with their three other friends, completing the group, and set out to conquer the night completely unaware that they would never set foot in their dorm room again.
*Author's Note*: I know it's a lot of background in these first few chapters but I promise it will make more sense later on. I want you all to know the main characters' histories it will make much more sense with later events in the story. Also the knights and Arthur will make an appearance soon, these first few chapters were already long enough without trying to get to that just yet. Also in case anyone had trouble figuring it out all the girls except for Tegan have nicknames. Tempy is short for Tempest I DID NOT take that from Bones I promise. (her nickname was going to be Storm but I thought that was too weird what with the X-Men character so I went with tempest cuz she has a major temper. Thanks for reading :) I hope you all enjoyed! Sorry for any annoying bad grammar mistakes or typos! Please keep reading!