what she left behind — chibs telford (soa) x reader
summary she was in Oakland when the call came. she drove back to Charming doing eighty on the freeway and didn't stop until she was in the hospital corridor. and then four days later she saw a name on the visitor chart she didn't recognise.
prompt – season 2 car bomb, reader rushes back, Fiona Larkin, Gemma explains, age comment confrontation, soft resolution warnings – canon typical violence, angst, age gap (23/35), Fiona, heavy then soft
word count – ~4k
note – what she left behind because Fiona left and she stayed and that means something..
The call came at half past nine on a Friday night.
She was in Oakland — three days into a girls trip that had been planned for months, the kind of weekend that existed specifically to step outside of Charming and everything that came with it. She was laughing at something when her phone buzzed and she looked down and saw Tig's name and felt something cold move through her before she'd even answered.
There was a bomb. At the lot. Chibs got caught in it. He's alive but it's bad — you need to come home.
She didn't remember the drive clearly. Just the freeway and the dark and her hands steady on the wheel because they had to be.
He was unconscious when she arrived.
She stood in the doorway of his room and looked at him — at the damage of it, the tubes, the specific wrongness of seeing someone so physically present in the world reduced to something that had to be still — and felt something in her chest that had no name yet.
She sat in the chair beside the bed.
He opened his eyes sometime past midnight. Looked at her with the unfocused quality of someone finding their way back from somewhere far.
"Ye drove back," he said. His voice wrong — rough, scraped.
"Of course I drove back."
He looked at her for a long moment. Something moving across his face that he didn't have the energy to contain.
"Go home and sleep, lass," he said. "I'm no' going anywhere."
"Neither am I," she said.
He didn't argue. Just closed his eyes again and kept hold of her hand.
The hospital had its own rhythm — coffee from the machine that tasted like nothing, the chair beside his bed, the specific quality of sitting with someone who was healing and needed nothing except presence. She was good at presence. She'd learned it from him.
On the second day he was more awake. More himself — or the version of himself that existed when the walls were slightly down because he was too tired to hold them all the way up.
"Ye should eat something," he said, looking at the granola bar she'd been turning over in her hands for an hour.
"Ye've been here since seven in the morning."
"I know what time it is."
He looked at her. The almost smile — barely there, but there.
"I learned from the best," she said.
He made a sound that was close to a laugh and then winced and she leaned forward immediately.
"Don't make me laugh," he said. "Ribs."
"Then stop being charming."
"Can't help it," he said. And closed his eyes again.
On the third day she noticed the energy around the club had shifted slightly.
She couldn't name it exactly — just something in the way Tig looked at Jax in the corridor, the brief hushed conversation that stopped when she walked past. She filed it away. The club had its own rhythms and she'd learned not to ask about the things that weren't hers to ask about.
She went back to his room. Sat in her chair. He was sleeping.
She looked at him for a long time and thought about how close it had been.
The visitor chart was on the board outside his room.
She saw it on the fourth day — coming back from the coffee machine, glancing at it the way you glanced at things when you were tired. Most of the names she recognised. Club members, Gemma, a few others.
Fiona Telford. Day three.
She stood there for a moment. Looked at the name. The last name hitting differently than the first — Telford. His name. On someone else.
She knew he'd been married. He'd told her that much — quietly, once, early on, in the specific way he disclosed things he felt she needed to know without elaborating further. She hadn't pushed. She'd understood there were parts of his past that weren't ready to be opened yet and she'd been patient with that.
But she hadn't known the name. Hadn't known she was here in Charming. Hadn't known she'd been in this hospital three days ago while she was sitting in that chair holding his hand.
She went back into the room and sat in her chair and looked at Chibs sleeping and told herself it was nothing.
It didn't feel like nothing.
She found Gemma in the corridor an hour later.
"Who is Fiona Telford," she said.
Gemma looked at her. Something moving through her expression — not surprise exactly. More like the specific quality of a woman who had been waiting for a question and was deciding how much of the answer to give.
"Come sit down," Gemma said.
Gemma didn't soften it. She never softened things.
She knew the outline already — the ex wife, the fact that Ireland had been hard, the vague shape of a past that had left marks on him she could see even when he wouldn't talk about them. What she hadn't known were the specifics. The IRA. Jimmy O'Phelan. The scars on his face — she'd noticed them early, had asked once gently and he'd said old history, lassand she'd let it go because she knew better than to push at walls that weren't ready to open.
She hadn't known the scars had a name.
She hadn't known his wife had been taken by that same name.
When Gemma finished the corridor was very quiet.
"She came on day three," she said. "That's — she would have had to leave Ireland the day it happened."
"She heard Chibs almost died," Gemma said simply.
She nodded. Looked at her hands.
"He knew she'd be coming," she said slowly. "He must have known. The club would have told him."
Gemma said nothing. Which was its own answer.
"He didn't say anything to me." She said it quietly. Not an accusation. Just the fact of it settling.
"Chibs doesn't talk about Ireland," Gemma said. "Not to anyone. Not really."
"I know." She did know. She'd always known there were parts of him kept somewhere she didn't have access to yet. She'd been patient with that. She'd understood it. She just hadn't known the size of it until now.
"Does she still—" she started.
"She still cares about what they were," Gemma said carefully. "That's different from what ye have."
"Thank you," she said. And went to find somewhere to stand that wasn't his room.
Fiona was in the corridor on the fifth day.
She was coming back from getting water when she saw her — standing outside his room with the specific stillness of a woman who had a history with this place and this person that went back further than she could imagine. She was older than her. Dark haired. The kind of presence that came from a life fully lived.
They looked at each other.
"You must be the girl," Fiona said. Her accent thick and soft at the same time.
Fiona looked at her for a moment. Unhurried. Taking her in.
"How old are ye?" she said.
Something moved across Fiona's face. Not cruel. Sadder than cruel somehow.
"He always did like them young," she said quietly. The way you said something you believed was simply true.
She felt it land in her chest. The specific cold of it.
"I'm not a phase," she said. Even. Quiet.
Fiona looked at her for a long moment. Something reassessing.
"I loved Filip for fifteen years," she said finally. "I know what he gives and what he keeps. The parts he keeps are considerable." She paused. "I'm no' saying it to hurt ye. I'm saying it because ye should know going in."
"I know already," she said. "I've been going in for eight months."
Something shifted in Fiona's expression.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
"Take care of him," Fiona said.
She watched her walk away down the corridor and stood there with her water bottle and thought about fifteen years and Jimmy O'Phelan and the scars and he always did like them young and the specific weight of being twenty three and loving someone who had entire countries worth of history she'd only just been given the outline of.
She stood there for a while.
He looked at her when she came in — the read, the thing he always did, the specific awareness of her that she'd learned to recognise.
"Ye spoke to her," he said.
"Things." She sat in the chair. "Things Gemma had already told me, mostly."
"I should have told ye she was coming," he said.
"Aye." He looked at the ceiling. "I knew she'd come when she heard."
"And you didn't say anything."
"No." A long exhale. "I didn't."
"I knew you had an ex wife," she said quietly. "You told me that. I wasn't asking for the whole story. I wasn't asking for Ireland or any of it." She paused. "I just needed to not find out from a visitor chart that someone had been sitting in this room while I was here every day not knowing."
He turned his head to look at her.
"I'm sorry," he said. Low and rough. The real kind — no managing, no walls, just the actual thing.
"She said you like them young," she said.
He closed his eyes briefly. "Christ."
"She didn't mean it badly. I think." A pause. "But it landed."
"I know it's not true," she said. "I know what this is. I've known for eight months." She looked at the window. "But twenty three is a fact and I can't argue with it and when someone says it like that it just—" she stopped. "It lands."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Ye're no' young to me," he said finally. "Ye're just ye. That's all ye've ever been." He held her gaze. "And I'm no' with ye because of your age. I'm with ye because of who ye are. There's a difference."
"Do ye? Right now, sitting there — do ye actually know that?"
"Yes," she said. "But I needed to hear you say it."
He reached out. His hand finding hers on the edge of the bed. Fingers closing around hers — certain, deliberate, the grip she'd memorised.
"Ye're no' a phase," he said quietly. "Ye're the first thing in a long time that felt like something I didn't want to lose."
She looked at their hands.
"The parts you keep," she said softly. "I'm not asking for all of them. I know I won't get all of them. I just need to know that sometimes — occasionally — you let me in a little further."
"I know I don't," he said. "I know I shut things away." A pause. "It's never about ye. It's just how I've learned to—"
"I know," she said. "I've always known that." She looked at him. "I'm still here aren't I."
Something shifted in his face.
He shifted on the bed — careful, working around the injuries — and made space beside him.
She looked at it. Looked at him.
"I know what I have," he said. "Come here, lass."
She sat beside him carefully. His arm came around her — slow, deliberate — and she rested her head against his shoulder and felt him exhale properly for what felt like the first time since she'd arrived.
"Her name was Fiona," he said. Into her hair. Quiet. Like he was deciding to open a door slightly further than it had been. "And Jimmy O'Phelan took her from me. Along with everything else." A pause. "The scars. Ye asked once."
"I want to," he said. "It was him. Before he took her — a message, he called it." His voice was flat in the way things went flat when they'd been lived with long enough to become fact. "I left Ireland and I never went back."
She didn't say anything. Just listened.
"I should have told ye she was coming," he said again. "That's on me."
"Yes," she said. "But you're telling me now."
"Aye." His grip tightened slightly. "I am."
They were quiet for a while. The machines beeped steadily. Outside the corridor moved with its usual rhythm.
"Mo gràidh," he said eventually. Low and rough, the accent thick the way it got when something was real. His lips pressing to her hair. "I'm no' going anywhere. Whatever ye're thinking after today — I'm no' going anywhere."
He looked back at her with the private version of himself — the one she'd been given in careful increments for eight months. The one that was here now, in a hospital bed with broken ribs, choosing to open the door a little further.
"Neither am I," she said.
"Good." He pressed a kiss to her hair. Stayed there. "That's no' negotiable."
She almost smiled. "Is that right."
She settled back against his shoulder.
Outside Charming was doing its usual thing and inside the room was quiet and she lay beside him and thought about visitor charts and fifteen years and eight months and the specific weight of loving someone who kept things — but was, slowly, in his own time, learning to let her in a little further.
The door was open a little further tonight.
