Disclaimer: Same old same old. Tanya's mine, story's cliché, but mine. Everything else isn't. And, I'm not making any money from this, so Disney and Co. better not sue. :)
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A choked whimper brought Jack out of unconsciousness. Glancing around disoriented at first, he tried to figure out where he was and what had woken him. "Bloody hell," he began to curse out loud when another cry came from the bed beside him. Pulling himself up along the foot of the bed, he peered into the moonlit area, squinting slightly as he tried to wake his senses a bit more.
Someone was in his bed, his mind registered, and it wasn't him.
"Of course not you idiot," his subconscious kicked back, "you gave her your bed for the time being."
Why the bloody hell had he gone and done a ridiculous thing like that? Given the circumstances, he was quite sure it made much more sense, at least to certain parts of his brain and body, to share the bed. "That," he reasoned, "at least prevented one from waking up cold on the floor of one's own cabin in the middle of the night for God's sake."
On the bed, Tanya lay asleep; caught in whatever madness her mind could create. Her cries grew steadily louder and more agitated, progressing to unintelligible statements tinged with terror and desperation.
Sighing inwardly, Jack knelt on the bed beside her, gingerly placing his hand on her shoulder. "Wake up luv," he murmured as his gaze took in her appearance. Lying on her back, her arms and legs moved restlessly, jerkily as she fought her inner demons. At his touch, she gasped, sucking in her breath, and rolled over, placing her back to him as she curled her body up as tightly as possible. She did not wake; but her cries increased, her words becoming increasingly clear to Jack's ears. "Papa… NO!…don't hurt him.. please..," her voice trailed off into a whimper again with the last word.
"Tanya luv, wake up," Jack spoke again as he reached to grasp her shoulder. "It's just a dream." Becoming increasingly agitated, Tanya's sleeping form reeled back at his touch and let out a strangled scream. "Shhh…," Jack soothed as he drew the girl into his arms, pinning her arms and legs against her body as he cradled her against his chest. "It's only a dream lass, no one's going to her ye here." Shushing softly as the stifled cries turned into heaving sobs, Jack continued to hold the girl tightly. Fierce anger toward her captors boiled in his heart, but was channeled, for the time being, into bring some level of comfort to the slowly quieting figure lying in his arms. As her breathing began to calm and her sobs dissolved into choked hiccups and sighs, Jack spoke once more.
"Are you awake now lass? It was just a dream."
Feeling the girl stiffen briefly in his arms when he spoke, Jack looked down and met her gaze in the moonlight. Piercingly intense at first, blazing with pent up anger, her gaze faded out to a dull stare as she answered him in a voice that matched the change.
"Nay. T'was more than a dream, was a memory."
With a tired, soft sigh, she turned her head, effectively blocking her face from Jack's direct view and squeezed her eyes shut against unshed tears that threatened to stream down her face with the slightest provocation.
Feeling Tanya's body relax in his arms, and noting she was making no efforts to get free of his embrace, Jack shifted back into a sitting position, swinging his legs out from under him and leaning up against the head of the bed. Moving one of his arms away for just a moment, he pulled a blanket over their bodies as he continued to cradle the distraught woman in his arms. "Would you like to talk about it now luv?" Jack pressed the girl slightly, knowing she was greatly in need of the opportunity to tell her story, whether she realized it yet or not.