The fire crackled low in the hearth, throwing lazy orange light across the living room. The snow outside was melting, slow and reluctant, like it hadn’t decided if winter was really over.
Joel sat in his worn armchair, elbows resting on his knees, a book balanced in his rough hands. The cover was faded, the spine creased-Structural Wood Framing. You were curled up on the couch opposite him, one leg tucked beneath you, your own book open and soft in your lap. The pages were yellowed and smelled like the past. Frankenstein.
It was the kind of evening that didn’t need words. Just the hum of life in a world that had stopped ending.
You broke the silence first. “Did you know-,” you said, eyes still on the page, “that when Mary Shelley’s husband died, she kept his heart with her until she died?”
Joel glanced up from his manual. “Kept his heart?”
“Yeah. Percy Shelley. He drowned, and when they cremated him, his heart didn’t burn.” You finally looked up, lips curling into a crooked smile. “She kept it in her desk drawer. Isn’t that, like…so romantic?”
Joel huffed, flipping a page. “Romantic? That’s downright disturbed, is what that is.”
You laughed. “Oh, come on. It’s love! It’s devotion beyond death.”
“It’s weird,” he said, glancing over his book at you, a smirk tugging his mouth. “Ain’t nobody keepin my organs when I go.”
You closed Frankenstein with a soft thud. “Maybe not your organs. But your heart? That’s debatable.”
Joel chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re somethin else, you know that?”
“I try,” you said, grinning.
The night stretched on-two people, two books, a single fire, and a world that, for once, wasn’t falling apart.
Fifteen Years Later
The snow was melting again. Same time of year. The same slow thaw. Joel stood at your grave, hat in hand, gray hair tucked behind his ear. The stone was simple-just your name, and a line you once said about love being “a story worth repeating.”
He knelt, and brushed the snow from the letters. His knees popped. Being seventy-five didn’t have its perks. “Getting too old for this shit now, won’t matter when they give in though, don’t have to come here to talk to you, do I, darlin?” He says with a smirk.
“Darlin-“ he murmured. “Another year with ya-still bringing you dried flowers like you asked for, I see last years ones have disappeared.” He laughed low, the sound cracking in his throat. “Tommy told me to come, said it’d be good for me. Think he’s just tired of seein me hauntin that damn porch.”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Town’s good. Ellie’s good. She’s teachin the kids now. You’d like that. You always said she had that spark- she misses you like crazy still, after all this time-we both do.”
The wind whistled through the trees, soft and hollow.
“I’m still keeping meself busy. Fix up the mill, patchin up some houses-I’m slower than I use to be darlin, takes me longer nowadays. You’d kick my old ass if you saw me working like this.” He barely lets out a laugh, he can feel his gut preparing him for tears. “Baby, I miss you so fuckin much…I just wanna be with ya…if it weren’t for Ellie, Tommy and benji, I’d have joined you years ago.”
He exhales slowly, tears slipping down his face. “I’m gonna go now, sweetheart ..I’ll see you at home.”
“Love you. Always will.”
The house was colder now, emptier. He still talked to you sometimes, as though you were in the kitchen, humming.
“Hello, darlin’,” he said when he walked in that night. “Went to your grave like a fool, talkin to myself.” The house didn’t answer back.
He shrugged off his jacket, hanging it by the door. “Made stew tonight. Don’t worry, didn’t burn it this time.” Joel’s voice grew softer as he moved down the hall, boots thudding on the worn floorboards.
He stopped at the bedroom doorway.
“Missed you, baby,” he whispered.
The lamplight flickered across the room, touching the nightstand on his side of the bed. There, sitting in the amber glow, was a silver heart shaped box. Inside-was something pale and fragile-looking, your heart. Dried and carefully preserved by Joel, who-a few days after your funeral-dug up your body, and took it. “Never leaving me, baby-never.”
Joel eased down onto the mattress, eyes fixed on it. A ghost of a smile tugged at his weathered face.
“Tommy says I talk to myself,” he murmured. “But he don’t know nothin..no one does.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, he reached out, fingertips brushing the silver box …”Just call me Dr. Frankenstein.”
Written for Day 5 of Jon x Sansa Fanfiction’s 15 Days of Valentine’s challenge.
Also, I should add that this fic is different from @nevercomingdown‘s lovely story “Unintended,” which was posted before mine and written for the same challenge. When I realized we’d independently written stories based on the same concept, I let her know, and she graciously allowed my fic to share the spotlight with her (superior) one. Please make sure to check out “Unintended” if you haven’t already!
Sansa was at the theater with Jeyne Poole when it happened.
One moment, she was watching Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi swing their lightsabers at each other’s heads. The next, her own head was exploding with pain, and explosions of light shattered her vision behind her eyelids.
She was aware that she had buried her head in her elbows and thrown her hands to the back of her neck in a vain attempt to stop the pain and the lights and the overwhelming urge to vomit. She was not aware that she had fallen out of her chair and collapsed on the floor, or that she was covered in the buttered popcorn she’d been holding in her lap, or that Jeyne was frantically shaking her by the shoulders and screaming for somebody to call 911. She could not even feel it when the man from three seats over picked her up and carried her out of the room while the woman next to him wrapped one arm around the shoulders of a shaking Jeyne and used the other to hold her cell phone. All she knew was that the pain had spread to her neck and shoulders, and that her left arm and leg were throbbing as though broken several times over.
The first thing of which she became aware after the waves of pain began to subside was that she was vomiting all over the floor of the lobby. Then she felt someone’s hand on her back and her hair being swept behind her head and Jeyne’s shaky voice calling her name. Sansa reached out and grabbed her friend’s arm with all of her might. She barely registered the other girl’s squeal of pain.
“Robb,” she gasped. “Robb’s in trouble. It’s Robb, not me. Jeyne, call Mom and Dad!”
She grabbed the other girl’s arm, and Jeyne’s face turned as white as Sansa’s. Her hands shook violently as she reached into her purse for her phone. Sansa released the other girl’s arm and flopped onto her back again. She felt the cold metal of one of the lobby benches behind her head and blinked as several strange faces popped into view. Almost as many voices spoke around her. At first she only heard vague undulations, but gradually the higher voices separated from the lower ones, the male voices from the female, the confused from the alarmed. One of them, a deep, booming male voice, rose above the others, and Sansa was able to make out the words, which formed an order to everybody to get back and “let the girl breathe.”
The voices began to recede, and Sansa could hear Jeyne again. The pain in her head receded just enough for her to make out the other girl’s words.
“Mr. Stark’s still checking…? OK… No? … Oh, here they – Mrs. Stark, the EMTs are here now for Sansa… Yes, she’s awake… He’s still trying? It’s still going to voicemail?”
Jeyne’s voice rose higher the longer she spoke, becoming so shrill at the end that the throbbing in Sansa’s head, which had begun to recede, came roaring back, along with the dread that had arisen in the pit of Sansa’s stomach when she had first gotten the headache. Sansa covered her ears and tried to breathe. One in. One out, sounded the familiar mantra in her head, a mantra that had gotten her through several similar attacks throughout her childhood. Two in. Two out. Three in. Three out –
Sansa felt a tap on her arm and bolted upright, dropping her hands from her ears as she did so. She opened her eyes to see the concerned face of a middle-aged woman in a white shirt right in front of her own. She hastily scooted backward along the bench, but her hands, propped up behind her, ran out of room into empty air, and she would have tumbled onto the floor but for a strong pair of arms that stopped her and held her in place.
“Sansa!” Jeyne shrieked, and Sansa slowly turned to see the other girl huddled next to the woman in the white shirt. “Sansa! Can you hear me?”
Sansa blinked and swung her legs off the bench with a moan. A second pair of arms reached out to steady her, and Sansa realized they belonged to the woman.
“Sansa?” The woman’s voice, while concerned, was much calmer than Jeyne’s. “Can you hear me?”
Sansa nodded slowly so as not to bring back the worst of the headache, which was receding again. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s my brother. He’s hurt – ”
“Her brother, Robb Stark,” explained Jeyne. Both the woman and a young man next to her, who was wearing an identical white shirt and must have owned the pair of arms that had kept Sansa from tumbling off the bench, looked around them as though expecting to see Robb collapsed onto the theater’s floor somewhere.
“No, not here,” Jeyne continued. Her voice had lowered considerably, although it was shaking. “She can feel it when he gets hurt badly, even if it’s miles away. She’s done it before. They’re twins,” she finished by way of explanation. Both strangers – paramedics, Sansa corrected herself – both still looked confused, but after a moment, they snapped into action. The man put a blood pressure cuff on her right arm, and the woman grabbed her left wrist and put a gentle finger to the inside of it.
Sansa sighed through gritted teeth. “I’m fine,” she said, and turned to Jeyne. “Jeyne, did my mom – ”
Jeyne shook her head. “She and your dad are trying to find him now,” she said. “His phone kept going to voicemail when your dad called it, so they’re trying his friends now.” She blinked as though Sansa’s headache had somehow transplanted itself into her own cranium. “Sansa, where this time? Just his head?”
Sansa shook her head. “Neck,” she replied. “Left side. His whole left side – his arm and leg and probably his ribs too.” She blinked, and suddenly a flood of tears crowded behind her eyelids. Two of them hit her cheeks before she could stop them.
“Sansa.” The female paramedic’s voice forced her to open her eyes. “Honey, your blood pressure’s 160 over 123. Your pulse is over 100. You should be seen by a doctor. We’re going to get you a stretcher, OK?”
Sansa stared blankly at her. The woman began to explain everything again, but Sansa shook her head.
“I’ll be fine,” she protested again. “It’s my brother – ”
“We’ll radio dispatch on our way in to see if they’ve got reports of any incidents involving someone matching his description,” she said. “What does he look like, dear?”
A sudden burst of pain tore through Sansa’s left leg. Two more tears leaked from her eyes, and then the dam burst and her face was wet all over.
“Nineteen years old,” she gasped. “Six foot one. Auburn hair. Blue eyes. Freckles – but just on his left cheek, not on his right – ”
Her voice gave out, and the sobs overtook her. After that, everything around her became a blur.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Sansa awoke to see her mother’s face, instead of the female paramedic’s, hovering over her own.
“Oh, Sansa,” sighed Catelyn Stark. Her eyes were as red as Sansa’s felt, and her face littered with the marks of barely dried tears. “My Sansa. How are you feeling, my love?”
The sick feeling returned to Sansa’s stomach at once. Her mother only used the endearment “my love” when she was extremely worried. Sansa gritted her teeth to bite back the vomit. It was then that she realized the pain throughout the rest of her body had largely subsided.
“He’s feeling better, Mom,” she said. She reached down to plant her elbows into the bed on which she was lying so she could prop herself up, but her right arm was thwarted by a plastic IV line stuck into the back of her hand.
“They gave you Ativan, honey,” Catelyn told her, but Sansa did not care.
“Robb’s feeling better, Mom,” she repeated. “Did you find him? Did Dad – ”
Catelyn Stark’s face, already lighter than its normal porcelain tone under the glare of the fluorescent bulbs lining the ceiling above Sansa’s head, turned pure white.
“He was in a car accident, sweetie,” she said. Sansa, whom her mother had last called “sweetie” when she had been twelve years old and sick with the chicken pox, felt the ugly dread from before claw back into her gut with full force.
“But he’s not in as much pain – ” she said weakly. The look on her mother’s face stopped her.
“They induced a coma, honey.” Catelyn Stark’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “His brain was swelling too badly. They couldn’t stop it.” She swallowed, and as she opened her mouth to continue, Sansa thought that her mother looked at least twenty years more than her actual age. She clutched instinctively at her chest.
“But his heart’s beating, Mom,” she protested. “His heart’s fine, so – ”
Catelyn Stark shook her head. “The life-support unit is keeping it that way, sweetheart,” she replied, “so that it can – it can be donated. He’s brain dead.” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, but one of the tears she was trying to stave off escaped. It ran down her cheek like a bolt of lightning in the glare of the fluorescent bulbs embedded into the room’s ceiling.
Sansa’s voice returned with her mother’s tears. At first she thought her mother was screaming in anguish, but after several moments she realized that Catelyn Stark’s lips were forming her daughter’s name, not the words no and Robb repeated in shrieks that bounced off of the walls. Then she felt arms and hands all over her, holding her down, and she tried to fight them off, but there were too many of them. The last thing she felt before darkness claimed her again was a stream of cool liquid seeping into her right arm.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
A smart knock sounded on the door of the hospital room.
“Come in,” called the woman, putting down her battered iPhone 4S. She shook her head at her own absent-mindedness. Whoever had knocked would come in whether or not she liked it.
A middle-aged man wearing a white coat and a kindly face stepped into the room and held out his hand. “Hello, Lyanna,” he said by way of greeting.
She rose from the chair parked at her son’s bedside and held out her right hand to shake his, but her left hand retained its hold on Jon’s.
“Dr. Mormont,” she said, and despite how many times he’d crushed it, the bloom of hope overwhelmed her chest again. This time, though, instead of shaking his head, he smiled and pulled the other chair from the opposite side of Jon’s bed to sit within feet of her own.
“Would you like to sit, please?” he said, and the woman complied. He would not, after all, say anything until she had.
“Please – ” she began. The doctor’s smile expanded.
“A matching heart has been found for Jon,” he said, and Lyanna, although she had spent two horrible years swearing she would not do it, burst into tears.
Sorry I only had time to post the one chapter for the theme day, folks! I’m planning to write and upload the remaining chapters after the end of the challenge. :-)
