A/N – That's right, I'm starting a new story. Blame a plot idea that wouldn't leave me (only for the past two years!). Don't worry; my other stories are still going to be updated. (Hears everyone breathe an immense sigh of relief)

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Second Heartbeat

Chapter 1 – Second Heartbeat

William Parry, leaning on his cane, walked up the path in the Botanic Garden to the bench that sat beneath an expansive willow. It had been seventy years now, seventy years since he had left behind Lyra Silvertongue, the one and only love of his life, and returned to his own world to build the Republic of Heaven on his own. A lot had changed in those seventy years—Will had found a wife of his own, just as he had promised Lyra, although he had never forgotten her and their promise to build the Republic of Heaven in their own separate worlds.

And so, every year at noon on Midsummer's Day, Will returned to the Botanic Garden in Oxford, where, in the universe so close yet so far away, he knew that Lyra was doing the same. Every year his daemon Kirjava sat on his lap, her feline body contorted into the curled-up shape that all cats had mastered, and waited for Pantalaimon in Lyra's world to feel for her.

Every year Will did this. But this year something was different. Will knew well that he was getting older—at the moment he was the not-so-young age of eighty-two—and that his Death was most likely following close behind him. But he had known this for many years. No, there was something else, something deeper, that told Will that his death was imminent. Will was not afraid of death; on the contrary, he looked to it almost as the next great adventure. He and Lyra had ensured that the afterlife would be a pleasant place for all, and when he died he would meet Lyra and they would exit the world of the dead through the window into the world of the mulefa, drifting into the heavens and eventually joining with their daemons as part of Dust itself.

"She's here right now, Will," said Kirjava wearily, her fragile voice showing the strain of years of companionship. "She's doing the same thing, in her own world. She never forgot you. Her and Pan, they're both waiting for us just like they promised they would."

"Are you sure, Kirjava?" asked Will, his voice shaking as he spoke.

"I'm sure," she said. "You settled her daemon, Will, and she settled me. There's a bond in that that goes deeper than just words and kisses and promises. Trust me—she's there."

And Will felt it, too. He felt it in his very bones, in his soul—the same soul that was currently bared to the world in the shape of a cat, if only the world knew how to look for it. And so Will sat on the bench in the Botanic Garden which had grown rusty with time, which he had used his influence as an Oxford professor to save from replacement many times, and, for that one precious hour every year, he could just be with Lyra, his Lyra, the love that was torn from him so unfairly so many years ago and which he had still not completely forgotten.

He remembered the small things—things like the feeling of her breath on his skin, the way her eyes lit up as she pressed the fruit to his lips in the world of the mulefa, her intense concentration as she turned the dials of the alethiometer. It was things like these that sealed the relationship between the modern-day Adam and Eve, things like these that ensured that, no matter how large a gap separated them, in time or space or Dust, they would still never completely be apart.

And then, for just an instant, Will closed his eyes, as Kirjava did the same next to him. He could have sworn that he saw Lyra's form, in her own world, doing the same thing; she was an old woman now, just as he was an old man, but there were still things about her that were recognizable—her eternally curious expression, as if the world held a vast store of knowledge accessible to her and only her; her hands moving absentmindedly by her side, as if working an invisible alethiometer; and of course the pine marten daemon curled up by her side. And he knew that she was seeing the same thing, in her world; and that she was thinking of how Will's jaw still jutted out stubbornly, and how his two fingers on his left hand stood as an eternal relic of his battle with Tullio atop the Torre Degli Angeli, and how Kirjava's golden fur shone in the sun.

William Parry felt the world he was in fade away, and his heart beat one last time before falling silent.

Meanwhile, in a hospital room in Oxford, England, John Harding was frantic.

John was a doctor, in his first year of practice after completing his residency. During his three years at St. Mary's Hospital of Oxford, he had become more than familiar with the hospital's "enigma", as he was affectionately called—William Parry.

William was truly a unique case. He had fallen into a coma when he was only a baby, and his concerned father and mother had brought him to St. Mary's. John Parry, the boy's father, had used his connections as a military man to get William only the best medical care, and St. Mary's was truly the absolute best. However, absolutely nothing that any of the doctors there, among the best in the world, could do for the child. He was in stable condition—all his vital signs were normal, all blood tests had come back normal, his EKG showed no abnormalities. And yet despite all their best work, William Parry would not come out of his coma. It had been three years since, and the entire time William had remained in the hospital, being fed intravenously and monitored constantly for any sign of change.

Dr. Harding only happened to be in the room with Will at the time—he had taken to visiting the child several times when he had few patients. But he was no less frantic when he watched Will's heartbeat suddenly stop.

At first he thought that the machine had malfunctioned—for the entire time Will had been at St. Mary's, he had seemed to be a completely normal boy, aside from the fact that he was in a coma. But when he unplugged and replugged the heart monitor and it still detected no heartbeat, Dr. Harding was frantic.

He raced for the emergency call button, praying that he wouldn't be too late to save the life of the young boy who was like a surrogate son to every doctor on call in the entire hospital. But before he could reach the button, a sound was heard—the most welcome sound in the world.

A heartbeat appeared on the monitor.

Then another.

Then another.

Dr. Harding exhaled deeply, his finger hovering anxiously over the emergency button just in case. But when the heartbeats returned full force, he instead sat and watched the boy, deciding to remain for several minutes in case anything else happened.

That was when it happened. William's heart was showing no signs of stopping and Will was showing no signs of emerging from his coma when suddenly Dr. Harding saw Will's left leg kick out.

Jumping up from his seat, Dr. Harding reached Will's bedside just as Will's heart rate increased. And then the absolute last thing that Dr. Harding expected happened—Will sat up in his bed, and, speaking incredibly clearly, said, "Excuse me, sir, but—where am I?"

When the nurse on duty walked in, she was shocked to see Dr. Harding's unconscious form on the floor next to a desperate Will trying to revive him.