A/N: You wanted the Robin story continued? Here you go! I love my new job, I'm super inspired, and my muse is your b**** :D
A/N#2: Pick one to your taste :D
Based on your votes one of these will receive a continuation.
(Or more than one if I feel inspired :D)
After putting their fight aside, it seems they have decided to accept the current state of affairs. At least John did. Sometimes he catches a fleeing frustrated expression on the face of his dead wife, but she doesn't say anything. She now comes almost every night, sometimes they just talk, sometimes make love. John wakes up in the morning fresh and well-rested, he sings with children on the drive to school, smiles more at work, and altogether he thinks that what he has now is more than any can hope for in widowhood. Until one day…
Option 1:
… a man in a stripy suit knocks at the door of his office. The man is tall, almost as tall as John, skinny, and has the most mental hair John has ever seen. The rubbish the man starts blabbering to him is even more bonkers, and John carefully pressed the security button under the table. The man is dragged out of the office, and everybody is discussing it for the rest of the day. John picks up the kids from school, they have dinner, watch cartoons, Tom complains that he is too old for Toy Story, John says no one ever is. Toy Story was Wren's favourite cartoon and no way in hell he isn't making his kids watch it till they go to college.
He takes a shower, climbs in his bed, he bought a single one after Wren died, and stretches his tired back. The words of the weirdo from earlier that day are whirling in his head. The bloke was clearly bonkers, there was some rubbish about time and space, and a tear in the fabric of reality, and John takes measured breaths in, just like Wren used to teach his "arrogant arse," that would be her term and she would mimic his accent, and finally he falls asleep.
He is in their house. For the first time it is actually their house. It is empty too, no furniture, no pictures on the wall, even the portrait of a thoughtful pug chewing on a daisy is gone from the wall of the living room, and then he can hear Wren screaming his name somewhere on the second floor. He rushes up, she is running between the rooms, he can hear the pitter-patter of her feet, the doors are banging, she is calling him. He jerks the door to their bedroom, and her body slams into his.
"God, John, I thought you'd never come!" She is pressing into him, his nose is full of smell of lilac, he cups her face and makes her look at him.
"Wren, what?.."
"Did he reach you?! The Doctor?! Did he get to you? God, John, we have very little time, and it explains everything now, you know? We were so blind!" She is speaking with the machine gun speed, and he is staring at her.
"Wren, what the hell?"
"The Doctor! The Timelord!" He doesn't get it, is he supposed to know what she is talking about?! "Damn it, John, tell me you actually listened to him."
"I have no idea what you are talking about." He is giving her a confused look, she punches his upper arm.
"You stubborn oaf! Why do you never listen?! The temper of yours!" She sounds exasperated, and he is giving her a confused shrug. What is it all about anyway? "John, a man was to find you. Tall, lean, stripy or blue suit, fantastic hair! The Doctor! He will help us to get me back and fix the time and space paradox my death created!"
John opens his mouth but nothing but "umlftah" some out. What?!
Option 2:
… she doesn't come. And then the night after she doesn't come either, and he is counting days, and it's been almost two months, and he is desperate and restless, and his mobile rings at work, he sees it is from police. His first panicked thought is that something happened to children. And then nausea rises, he is painfully reminded of the day he was informed his wife's Toyota swirled on black ice and plummeted into a rapid river in Minnesota.
"Mister Thorington, it is Police Department of Dundas, Ontario. We are calling from Norfolk General Hospital..." The officer's voice is even, and John has to ask four times for him to repeat the message. And then again. And then again. And then he asks the officer to hold.
He opens the door into the analysts hall and rasps, "I need… I need..." Several people look at him, he cannot see faces, everything is swimming before his eyes. He sways and someone comes up to him.
"John..." The voice is female, and he cannot care less. A small hand picks up the phone from his hand, someone is pulling at his arm, he heavily drops on the nearest surface.
"Ask them… They need to confirm..." John cannot speak up, his voice is a coarse choked almost cough, or heave, his throat is constricted, and he hears a clear female voice.
"Hello, my name is Robin Strike, could you explain what it is about? Mister Thorington cannot speak at the moment..." She is apparently interrupted, and then John hears her gasp loudly.
They have never found Wren's body. Just a distorted bloodied car, there was so much blood no one expected her to live. It has been five years. And two months ago she woke up from her coma in the Norfolk General Hospital, near a small tourist town of Dundas, famous for its Main Street with about a hundred shops and the picturesque view on the Dundas Valley.
He arrives at the hospital, has a conversation with the doctors and two police officers, he cannot for the life of him remember later what they told him, because his hands are shaking, and then they finally show him to the room.
She is sitting by the window, and she is the skinniest he has even seen her. Or not. He cannot bloody remember what she looked like. He thinks he has seen her two months ago, and then he remembers that it was just a dream. Or not. He cannot understand anything. He is standing in the doors to a hospital room, and tears are running down his face.
She turns and stares at him. Neither can say anything.
She doesn't remember him, neither does she remember the children. Or her name. Or anything else for that matter. After almost five years in coma, she just opened eyes one day. The last two months she's been slowly regaining control over her muscles, they've been testing her intellectual abilities, her 165 IQ remained intact to the doctor's astonishment, but she has no memories. Sometimes there are flashes, they are blurry and inaccurate, and John cannot tell the doctors that they are real. All dates and facts are messed up in them, but only because what she remembers are the dreams he has been having for the last five years and everything in them is mixed up.
She remembers the places, the smells, the textures, but never him.
He is looking at her face, and she frowns.
"Are you my husband?"
"I'm John."
"And who am I?"
"You are my Wren."
He drives them home and has to stop at a gas station. He climbs out of the car and pressing the hands of his straight arms into the bonnet of the car he is throwing up. Sobbing shakes his body but he can't take it under control. He can see her giant eyes and terrified pale face through the windscreen, and he wants to reassure her, but he has nothing.
He has had a conversation with the children, Unna was two when it happened, she can hardly remember anything. She is in the second grade now, she promises she understands. Tom is pale, and his lips are pressed in a distressed line. He was five then, he knows a pale uncertain woman who is wriggling her hands by the door doesn't look much like his mother. She always laughed. She would say she just was happy. She would come up with a new game for him every day, she could bake animal shaped pancakes, and kissed his Dad all the time. Sometimes they would dance in the kitchen to whatever music would come from the radio. There was always theatrical dunking her backwards. This woman isn't even smiling.
John makes her a bed in a separate room, she has nightmares and wakes up screaming. The first five weeks are the hardest, with time he can see more and more of her old determination wake up. She pushes herself to get up when the children are getting ready to school, she then starts cooking breakfasts, the psychologist they go to three times a week suggests her to consider going back to work, but she shakes her head. She cannot remember a single pattern, she was a fabric designer. She has no interest in it either.
Every evening John prays to all gods and deities he doesn't believe in thanking them for this gift. He doesn't have his old dreams obviously, and during the day he has no wife, but all that matters is that she lives. Two months after they came home from the hospital she asks to show her old photos. She is endlessly collected, he used to be good at reading her but even he couldn't always understand what she thought or felt. Her composure was a family joke. These days are no exception. The only difference is that he used to be certain she did feel something, he can't tell now.
She has photographic memory, so she goes through photos, postcards, brochures, receipts, and old Google calendars, learning events, relatives, names. She is still not ready to see anybody, which she politely tells him. She talks to him as if he is her doctor, and from this clinical coldness he sometimes feels like breaking every object in the house, but then he remembers the five years without her, and he smiles to her softly and does what she asks.
She is highly functional. After the first two months they don't invite a nurse to stay with her anymore, the house is clean, there is always food, she goes grocery shopping, the children got used to her by then, they exchange polite goodbyes, with time a kiss to her cheek is added to the procedure. She helps them with homework, she lacks factual knowledge but she has always been an exceptionally fast learner. She studies during the day, Wikipedia and Google help, and in the evenings they have dinner and have family movie nights. There is popcorn, and he sits on the other end of their large sofa, and he is in heaven and hell at the same time. He watches her instead of the film, discreetly, she is always absorbed in the show. She is so beautiful his heart hurts. The agony and desire to touch her are excruciating, and they have nothing to do with sex. Well, at least almost never. He has erotic dreams now, but unlike her coma dreams, as he calls them, these leave him unsatisfied and restless. He is willing to pay this tiny price for having her in the house.
One day he comes home, Tom is at soccer, Unna is in a sleepover, he has half an hour to change before it's time to drive to pick up Tom, he opens the door and notices the smell of smoke. He rushes into the kitchen, everything is OK, except he finds a burnt pan in the garbage.
And he finds Wren crying desperately on the sofa in the living room, she is curled in a ball, her small hands fisted tightly. He doesn't know how much contact she would be comfortable with, previously all their touches were accidental, and she seemed completely unaffected by them.
"Wren, what is it?" He remembers to keep his tone even, just like the doctors advised.
"I burnt the dinner… I was making risotto… And I burnt onions and carrots..." Her voice is nasal, and she sniffles.
"It is alright, it is just a pan, we can order take away," he sighs with relief and makes a small step towards her. She lifts red puffy eyes at him.
"I remembered how you once tried cooking the Russian borsch that you thought was so easy to make. And the house smelt of fried onion and carrots, and then you burnt them." Their eyes are locked. "The smell reminded me, I froze in front of the stove, and burnt the vegetables… And the pan… Because I remembered how you were chasing me around the house yelling it was my fault because I wore those shorts and you could not concentrate on the soup…" Her voice is hardly audible, and his hands start to shake. She slowly sits up on the sofa. "I don't remember you, John. It is like I saw a piece of a film. I do not know the woman I saw… And you… I do not know you..." Tears are running down her cheeks again. His face is wet too. "But I want to..." There is a plea in her tone, he crosses the room in a few large steps, and she has already opened her arms. He drops on his knees in front of the sofa, her arms go around his neck.
She smells of lilac. And Wren. He bought her the same products she used to like. Her hair grew out, and it tickles his nose. He is holding her gently in his arms, his body is quaking, but he is controlling himself, he isn't squeezing her like he wants to, and she moves away, still staying in the circle of his arms. Her strong narrow palms lie on his upper arms.
"John, I..." He gives her a shaky smile, encouraging her to talk, but she chooses another way. He sees her close her eyes as if nervously, and she gently presses her lips to his. The kiss is chaste and her lips are salty, and then she moves away, "John, I think I know what to do."
Option 3:
… a UPS truck runs into the side of John's car when he is driving the children from school.
A year passed after that fight of theirs, John lives his double life, Wren and him are rather happy, not more than any other happily married couple, no less than those who live in the same realm. The only circumstance tarnishing their life is that Wren cannot see her children. John tells her of their every day, in details, but she always ends up crying desperately.
The truck hits them, the metal screeches, glass shatters, it is not John's fault, it is just an accident, the truck driver is not at fault either, but no one can survive this. John's car is propelled off the highway, into the trees below, and more and more hits fall on the already distorted carcass of his Toyota…
… and he wakes up with a scream. He is hyperventilating, flailing his arms, and then his hand meets the smooth skin of his wife.
"Wrennie, God, Wrennie, thank goodness… Sod it, that was a horrible nightmare..." He rasps out, and before he receives any answer, and he doesn't need any to know it's her, he pulls her into him. He knows this is not a dream, he knows this is real. She is shaking and crying, just like him.
"God, John, I had such a horrible dream… There was..."
"A car accident..."
"A car accident, and I died, and then..."
"And then I had dreams of you for five years, and then we died too..."
They stop talking together, and she slowly moves to light up the lamp. They are staring at each other, and at the next moment her nightie and his PJ bottoms are flying off. They shag twice, rolling on the bed, grabbing, biting, kissing, licking, she is moaning loudly when her third rogasm hits her, she tried to keep her voice down for the kids' sake the first two times, but this one is too large. He snarls and cums the second time. They are intertwined so tightly, it's hard to tell which one is where and he pulls the comforter over them.
"What the hell was that?" He breathes out, nuzzling her neck.
"I believe this position is called the Dolphin," she answers lazily, and he nips her skin.
"Smart arse," he exhales into her ear, and she giggles. "I meant what do you think of the dream?"
"I think we are taking a bus and commuting from now on." He slightly shifts, still holding her close, and looks into her eyes. She smiles warmly and peck his lips. "Have I ever told you I adore your eyes and am happy Tom got your colour? Such a glacial blue..."
"Concentrate, Leary, we just had a shared dream and it felt bloody real."
"Well, and now actually back to reality, does it still feel real?" She asks softly, and he gives it a thought.
"It feels more real than an average dream but less real than this," her gives her shoulder a lick and receives another giggle.
"So yeah, again. No more driving for either of us."
"No argument from me. And now a bath and another shag." He gives her a wide smile.
"No argument from me," she mimics his accent, and he guffaws.
A/N: This one won't get a continuation, but read the next one, though the beginning will seem repetitive :D I'm having loads of fun here :D
Option 4:
… a UPS truck runs into the side of John's car when he is driving the children from school.
A year passed after that fight of theirs, John lives his double life, Wren and him are rather happy, not more than any other happily married couple, no less than those who live in the same realm. The only circumstance tarnishing their life is that Wren cannot see her children. John tells her of them every day, in details, but she always ends up crying desperately.
The truck hits them, the metal screeches, glass shatters, it is not John's fault, it is just an accident, the truck driver is not at fault either, but no one can survive this. John's car is propelled off the highway, into the trees below, and more and more hits fall on the already distorted carcass of his Toyota…
… and he wakes up with a scream. He is hyperventilating, flailing his arms, and then his hand meets the smooth skin of his wife.
"Wrennie, God, Wrennie, thank goodness… Sod it, that was a horrible nightmare..." He rasps out, and before he receives any answer, and he doesn't need any to know it's her, he pulls her into him. He knows this is not a dream, he knows this is real. But something feels off. He doesn't care, he is embracing her, and he is awake.
"John, you have to stop, I need to tell you something..." He finds her mouth and is kissing her, and then slowly his mind starts perceiving the strange changes. He moves away from her, her strong hands are on his shoulders, and she speaks calmly and evenly. "John, you need to prepare yourself. Just don't panic. We will be OK, but you need to stay calm." He reacts to her intonation, he is bracing himself, but then he jerks his shoulders. His body feels funny. Foreign. Stronger. But... short?! What the fuck?!
Wren moves in the darkness, still holding his shoulder firmly, and lights up a lamp. That is not their bedside lamp, the light is different and there is a smell of some sort of oil burning in the air. His jaw slacks. Wren is wearing a long demure white night dress, which is fine, but her hair is scattered on the shoulders and on the sheets around her. What a hell is this barmy length?! There is a heavy, very much real looking necklace around her neck, opals he'd say, and then he looks around. They are in a medieval castle. The bed they are in is the most mind blowing thing he has ever seen in his life. It has a carved headboard, with a giant tree decorating it, the posts are trunks with brunches, there is a green velvet canopy, and then he finally understands why he feels so funny. He jerks the cover off himself. He is short! The width seems the same, but there is more body hair, his legs are shorter, there are more muscles, and are these scars?! And what the hell is with the braids?
"John, breathe, OK? You need to stay calm." His first thought is Tom and Unna.
"The kids?!.."
"They are alright, they got here two months ago, we were just waiting for you."
"What?!"
"This place is called Middle Earth, it is basically a parallel universe or something like that, like in those fantasy books you read..." He is staring at her, Middle earth sounds unfamiliar. And then a ridiculous thought comes, and he knows he is being a typical man, but he sneaks a peek at his wedding vegetables. Well, the size is the same, but now with the new proportions… "John, are you seriously evaluating your cock while I'm explaining to you that we are in a parallel universe, and you are a King here?" He whips his head.
"What?!"
"Yeah, your name is Thorin Oakenshield, some of Thrain, son of Thror, and you are the King of Erebor Dwarves."
"Dwarves?" That explains the proportions. She looks the same which means he is now five two like her.
"Yeah, and I'm your wife. Tom is called Thror here, Unna is weirdly enough Unna. I got here a year ago, time moves differently here." He is processing it, and then he grabs her and pulls her to him. Who cares what height they are! She is alive and near him!
"God, Wren, you are here… I thought I lost you… " Her arms are around his neck, and she sobs quietly.
"I know, darling, I am sorry. But the dreams, John, I had them too… I was stuck here and had these dreams about you… And then I realised they were the link to you, and I was worried to let you go, but then I thought you needed to live… God… And then the kids came, they told me of the car accident. And I knew you would come..." They sit embracing for a few seconds, she is crying but they seem to be happy tears, his cheeks are suspiciously wet too, and then he has a thought.
"Wait, you've been married to this bloke for a year?!" He doesn't want to sound this way, but he is growling.
"Yeah..." She chews on her bottom lip, he tells himself to control his temper, considering the circumstances, but he is quickly losing it, but she cups his face. "It was only the pretense, I had to explain everything to him, and it took a while… He thought I was crazy, thought his wife had gone mad, but then I managed to convince him. He was very understanding, and then the children joined in, so he was OK. Very sad of course, without his wife." Sincere sympathy is heard in her voice, and John feels a bit jealous. And then he remembers they are in the same bed, he is only wearing a pair of some barmy linen trousers... Wait, that actually makes his very jealous!
"So you haven't shagged him but you slept together?" That is already a roar, but seriously!.. Wren blushes furiously.
"John, please don't get angry. It is hard to explain, but he is you… Was you… It is a parallel universe, and you are the same person. It's complicated… But nothing happened! It was hard but I resisted!" She rushes to reassure, it isn't helping much. "Gandalf explained to me it was a realm anomaly, our world started leaking into theirs, I wasn't supposed to die in that car accident, and so I replaced his Wren, but when you replaced him, the worlds aligned themselves the right way again, because us being separated was an anomaly, and now we are in a pocket parallel reality, and their world has straightened up again, so he is with his Wren now, and you, I and the kids are here." John blinks. What else is there to do?! But again, wait! She was in the same bed as the cursed Dwarf!
"Wren..." There is menace in his tone, and she blushes even more furiously. "What happened through this year?"
"Um..."
A/N: So, which one? ;)