A guest reviewer gave me the idea for N. I don't remember the name, but if that person happens to be reading this, leave a review to make sure I know which one you fabulous people gave me the idea.

Some short story info in the bottom A/N, including some on this story.

P.S.: I know this isn't following the storyline of the show anymore, but I thought that coming up with alphabetical prompts would be even harder if I did that, not to mention how Callie would be paired up with everyone because I barely have that under control as it is, so please don't torch my head off for that, kay?

Nightmares

mariana&callie

It was three weeks after the Liam incident when Callie had a nightmare.

She was surprised (and maybe a little sickly proud) when she bolted up, screaming and sweaty as her hands uncontrollably clawed at her legs, trying to get rid of what wasn't there.

All the feelings and aches from when she last had a nightmare - a little over three years ago - came back in a sickening rush of familiarity.

But what she hated about nightmares was when she finally woke up.

Callie had a horrible habit of screaming herself awake, but never snapping out of them as quick as she wanted to. She still felt her own hands clawing at her legs, the memory of small trickles of blood running down her thighs, but there was also the crushing weight of Mariana's eyes on the side of her head.

"Callie?" she asked hesitantly.

Was it weird she sounded like she was at the end of tunnel? Why couldn't Callie respond without screaming?

Hell, are those even words coming out of her mouth?

Mariana repeated this mantra of her sister's name a couple times more before she decided it was no use.

"Mom! Momma!" Mariana cried, peeling out the room in earnest.

Callie heard the thunderous footsteps as everyone rushed into a moving cloud of chaos, and as much she wanted to just wake up and make them stop - she'd never been one for fussing, after all - her mouth remained a frozen 'O' of terror, back arched off her sweat-slicked sheets.

"Callie, baby, can you hear me?"

Stef was in the tunnel, too, but sounded closer, and frantic, as if watching a train wreck happen right before her eyes. Callie imagined that must be what it's like, seeing her in such a pathetic state like in-between, not able to tell the difference between what's real and what's not.

But his touch was still there, covering every part of her body with a grimy burn, as if her skin was nothing more than trash lit on fire.

It stung, it hurt, it felt like she was being buried in the deepest pits of hell.

How come she never remembered them like this?

Didn't the screaming work by now? Shouldn't she just be in the present, no longer a fourteen-year-old rape victim?

She gagged, her throat raw with her guttural shouts.

"We can't disturb her," she heard Lena say in the background, something to her left. She sounded grim, sad. "It might make it even worse."

After that, it fell into silence, except for Callie's own painful screams.

But she felt wide awake.

After a timeless period, she came to, hoarse and aching in her legs and chest. It felt hard to breathe.

For a few terrorizing moments of time, her vision remained blurry at the edges, making everything around her seem like lurking shadows threatening to jump at her.

When it sharpened into focus, it was like a rubber band being snapped right between her eyes, making her wince at the suddenness. Even the slightness of their bedroom light, Callie's eyes burned as if she was looking right into the sun.

No one talked or moved for a while. No hands tried to reach out and offer comfort, no lips slid against her hair. Callie was momentarily worried that they'd forgotten breathe.

Oh god, had it really been that bad? It always seemed so bad to experience it that she had never thought of what people see on the outside.

Did she gleam with sweat when she arched off the bed? Was her face pinched in pain? Had her eyes even been open?

Was she still sweating? Her clothes felt uncomfortably damp and heavy on her body. She shuddered; even her skin didn't feel right. It seemed like she was an unfortunate art project - everything was stuck on with glue.

When she swung her legs over the side, someone finally decided it was safe to move and didn't hold back, barreling into her with the force of a hurling baseball.

Jude's shirt-clad arms wrapped tightly around her mid-section, tight and warm around her.

Callie closed her eyes, releasing a shuddering breath as she hugged back, snaking her arms around him and keeping him close, burying her face in his soft hair, taking in the homey aroma of his shampoo.

No one said anything for a long while.

Mariana took in everyone faces. Her moms held hands and made their faces blank, but their eyes were stormy with emotion; Brandon's face was hard, a mask of stone; Jesus's eyes swam with held back tears and he gripped the door frame with both hands so hard that his fingers turned white. Mariana was afraid that if he didn't let go soon, they would have to use a crowbar to peel his fists off.

For a moment, she tried to focus on her own reaction. For the most part, she felt equal parts concerned and terrified. Concerned because this obviously wasn't the first time Callie had this night terrors, and that in all her foster homes, she and Jude hadn't been with anyone that would care about them like the Fosters obviously already did.

Secondly, she was terrified because of what that monster Liam did to her sister. Callie looked broken, insecure and afraid as she hugged Jude like a teddy bear. Her arms were shaking, full of tension from where they were wrapped around his back. Jude's face was red where it was buried in his sister's shoulder.

Mariana didn't have a lot of experience with nightmares, or night terrors, as she would later hear her moms call them. She knew she had them, when she and Jesus were first adopted by Stef and Lena, but she was young she couldn't remember them. She knew that nights were too long, and in the morning she didn't feel alive - just like a zombie.

But it's been months since Callie - or any of the Fosters, really - have had to face him. Having nightmares about it now, especially after so long, didn't sit well with Mariana.

It takes a long time for a sliver of normal to appear. It starts when Callie's breathing goes back to normal and her hold on Jude isn't so tight.

Without a word, her family begins to slowly filter out, sensing Callie's need for privacy. Jude was the last to go. Mariana kind of felt bad watching him leave - it was like watching a wounded puppy limp away. But he obviously thought it would be best to give his sister another go at a peaceful night's rest, too.

Mariana spent the rest of her night looking up the difference between nightmare and night terror underneath the covers on her phone. Night terrors turned out to be something to think over - basically nightmares, except the person is more likely to physically react in the moment of it but wake up not remembering it.

So, Callie was being tortured by vicious memories of Liam, and would wake up feeling traumatized by it, but would never remember them?

Mariana couldn't decide it that was better or worse than a nightmare.

She trained her ears to pick up Callie's every movement - her tossing and turning, when she flipped her pillow for the cool side, when she pushed the blankets off then pulled them back up. She'd never heard of her sister being so restless.

It made Mariana feel useless. But she also knew from curious research into different blogs of abuse victims that touching her would probably set her off as good as another night terror would, and being a threat was the last thing she wanted, especially when they shared a room and had become so close.

When she got sick of punishing herself and reading a bunch of articles on night terrors and other people's personal experience, Mariana shut her phone off and twisted on to her side.

Neither girl slept much that night.

Callie had never been much of a stuffed animal kid.

Jude was. Still kind of was, whenever the family went to the county fair or carnival, and he won something, he went absolutely ecstatic about it. When he was little, their mom had stuffed his crib full of miniature ones - elephants, lions, bears, the occasional unicorn. You name it, baby Jude was soundly drooling on it in his crib at night. Looking back on it, Callie was surprised he didn't once roll over and stuff his face in a hippo butt and suffocate himself.

Three-year-old Callie hadn't minded the fact. She got plenty enough. And she was old enough to go with her daddy for ice cream trips, so she didn't complain.

When they were put into the system, they both knew it wouldn't be good to carry too much stuff with them. Just the essentials like clothes, toiletries, and a few cherished items each. While Callie had chosen a few of her parents favorite books and her mother's locket, Jude had brought a simple friend - Benny the Lion.

She knew better than to try and convince him to leave it behind with the rest of the animals that would eventually make their way to a toy drive somewhere. Although she knew that something would end Benny's life - a mean foster sibling, misplacement, ink guns - sooner or later, warning Jude of that would do nothing.

(Benny died of all three four foster houses in, when Michael, a distraught fifteen-year-old found Benny the lost Lion and made Jude watched on he fired his ink-loaded pistol at the bear's head. Jude slept with her throughout their stay at the next two house after that incident.)

Needless to say, the stuffed animals in Callie's life never boded well in the end.

Imagine her surprise when walking in from a long day of school and finding a medium sized elephant propped against her pillows.

Callie stopped.

Jude had only ever had Benny, and none of the Fosters knew about his tragic death, or Jude's animal filled crib. Nor Jesus, Mariana, or Brandon had childhood animals sitting on their shelves, so it didn't seem likely that they just had one to surprise her with, out of the blue.

Hesitantly, she picked up the elephant. Its floppy plush ears lifted weakly in the breeze her motion made, reminding Callie vaguely of Dumbo. She checked the black fabric collar around his neck; he didn't appear to have a name tag.

Huh.

Callie waited until dinner to bring up her new roommate, trying to distract herself with bio notes and the college applications the guidance counselor had been shoving at her all week.

(She was kind of dreaming of Columbia, but that was all it was. A dream.)

But if anyone asked if she'd spent the majority of that time petting the softness of the elephant, she totally hadn't been. Not even a little.

"So, does anyone want to mention why I found a new roommate sitting on my pillow?" Callie set down her forkful of spaghetti to hold up the stuffed animal as evidence.

"Oh, that's adorable!" Lena cooed as she picked up her glass of water.

Jesus smirked. "Yeah, too cute."

Callie narrowed her eyes at him; this kind of stunt had his name written all over it. "Jesus, you little -"

The boy in question held up his hands in defense. "Hey, for the first time, this one wasn't me."

Callie took another glance down at the elephant. Brandon was the spending the week at his dad's while Danny was in Chicago visiting her mom, and Jude was spending the night at Connor's for the first time in a while.

Slowly, she met eyes with Mariana across the table. This hardly seemed like something the moms would do.

"Guilty," Mariana sang sheepishly.

Callie pushed her plate aside to set her new animal in front of her, looking into its shiny black eyes. "Uh, thank you. But why with the random gift all of a sudden?"

Mariana shrugged, beginning to wrap spaghetti around her fork. "I used to have a lot of stuffed animals around me to sleep better when I was a kid. Elephants were always my favorite for nightmares, so I figured why not pass on the good fortune?"

Stef let out a soft laugh. "I remember that time when you five and we thought you'd suffocated underneath the giant weight of your Pooh Bear. That thing had to be at least three times as big as you were."

"To be fair, she was a tiny five-year-old," Jesus teased.

Mariana snorted indignantly as Callie gave another look to her elephant. She decided then and there that he would be named Dumbo. It suited him.

"Well, thanks for him," Callie said with sincere gratitude. It wasn't often she got gifts just because, especially from her sister.

Mariana shrugged, lifting up her fork. "No biggie. But I'm totally holding it against you if you don't get me something kickass for my birthday."

I know, it's been forever! But I am so so so so so so so sorry about that! I figured that updating with a fluffy kind of prompt would make up for it, and after forever, I was finally able to come with something!

I know this isn't the first time I've said it and it won't be the last, but Mariana and Callie are really hard to write about together.

In the next chapter, I'm going to try and get things more lined up with the show's plotline, but it's going to be the minor stuff, like Mariana's hair and Jude's silence, I think.

Please review and leave what prompts you want to see in the chapter! Until next time, bye!