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yourdeepestfathoms · 5 years

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Like Mother, Like (not) Daughter

Joan couldn’t remember who her parents were. She remembered her brother, but she couldn’t remember the people who brought her into this world. Their names were a mystery to her, and she didn’t even know what they looked like.

Did she even have parents? Were they involved in her life? Maybe they gave her away?

She just...couldn’t remember.

But then Jane showed up in her life again and the sadness of not knowing who raised her went away. She always looked at Lady Seymour like she was the sun; bright, powerful, and keeping her alive. Joan felt safe around Jane, loved, even if the affection wasn’t directed towards her.

After reincarnation, Joan did everything in her power to make sure Jane liked her. She continued to act like a lady in waiting, helping the queen whenever it was needed. If she was being overbearing, Jane didn’t show it. She just smiled kindly and thanked the keyboardist, which nearly sent her into another plane of existence each time.

However, something Joan began to notice was Katherine Howard getting really close to Jane. She thought it was strange- they didn’t know each other in their past lives; why would Jane be treating her like...a daughter?

How was that fair?!

Despite her envy, Joan tried to keep herself calm, even when she heard Katherine call Jane “mum” for the first time. Her blood boiled in her veins and she clenched her jaw so tightly her gums started to ache, but she didn’t say anything.

Oh how she wanted to scream, though.

Maybe she wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe Jane didn’t know.

Maybe Jane just needed a little sign.

And so that’s why Joan called the queen “mum” after another one of their shows.

“What did you call me?” Jane asks, furrowing her eyebrows together. Did she hear that right? Did Joan just...

“Oh!” The keyboardist says. She rubbed the back of her neck, grinning sheepishly, “I called you ‘mum’! Cause, like, I see you as a mother figure, actually.”

She smiled wider, a giddy feeling rising in her as she awaited Jane to say she saw her as a daughter.

But...she didn’t.

No, the queen got a pitiful look in her eyes, like she was staring at a wounded lamb.

“Oh, Joan, love, that’s...that’s very sweet of you, but...” Jane couldn’t seem to find the right words, “I’m. I’m not your mother, love.”

Joan blinked a few times. Her smile fell. She felt a hot coil of embarrassment twist up in her stomach.

“I-I mean, I know that, but-”

People backstage were starting to stare. Joan wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t move.

“I-I just that, maybe, you would want... I- You-” Her words are coming out knotted and tangled. Instead of trying to continue that sentence, she softly says, “I can’t remember my parents, my lady. And I just thought that-”

“That doesn’t make me your mother.” Jane says as gently as possible.

“I know that!” Joan says, her voice raising a few pitches. There’s a few snickers all around her. Her face is glowing, a bright contrast to her usually pale skin, “I-I just wanted someone- You- What about Katherine?”

“Katherine is a child. She needs a mother to take care of her.”

“But-”

“How old are you, Joan?”

Joan’s lips quivered, but she’s quick to bite down on the bottom one, grinding her teeth against the soft flesh to try and gain some grounding. The coil in her stomach tightens and she suddenly feels like she’s on fire.

“Twenty.” She whispers. Jane gives her a sympathetic look.

“You’re an adult, Joan.”

Tears burn down Joan’s cheeks and she inhaled sharply through her nose. She nodded shakily as a sob rattles in her chest, which is unable to bite back.

“I understand.”

With that, she turns away from the queen and walks away.

—————

It’s been a week since then. Joan has refused to even talk to Jane, let alone look in her eyes. The two blondes made a conscious effort to avoid each other; darting away if they saw black or silver rounding the corner, checking rooms before entering to make sure the other wasn't there.

They were both walking on eggshells, and for good reason.

Jane didn’t mean to embarrass the girl like she did. In fact, she was quite flattered. But her mouth chose other things to say and the broken look on Joan’s wouldn’t leave her. She wanted to make things right.

And maybe she could have, if Joan didn’t keep fleeing like a lamb seeing a wolf every time she came near.

However, an opportunity eventually came forth.

It was snowing. Jane was enjoying the late evening by sewing when her phone rang. Without looking at the caller ID, she reached over and picked up.

The first thing she heard was what she thought was...teeth chattering?

“Hello?” She says, slightly confused by the noise.

No reply.

“Hello?” She tried again.

Nothing. Only more clattering and a few wheezy breaths.

“This isn’t f-”

“L-Lady Jane...”

Jane bolted upright.

“Joan?”

A tiny whimper.

“Joan, honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

The second whimper confirmed that the keyboardist was, in fact, not ‘okay’.

Jane leapt up off of the couch and began pulling on her boots and coat.

“Listen to me, sweetheart. I need you to breathe and tell me what’s going on. Can you do that for me?”

She heard a few shaky breaths followed by a horrible coughing fit that lasted so long that Joan began to make high-pitched wheezing noises.

“It hurts,” The keyboardist sobs, “Lady Jane, it hurts!”

“Deep breaths, Joan. Where are you right now?” Jane asks, swiping the car keys from the kitchen counter. “I’m coming to help you.”

“P-park,” Was all she got in reply before it sounded like Joan dropped her phone and the line went dead.

That was enough to practically give Jane wings and she raced out to the car.

Once she arrived at the location Joan gave her, Jane circled the park a few times, scouring every inch of the snow-covered field. Eventually, she parked and began walking around while calling her former lady in waiting’s name. Finally, she spotted the girl over by some trees, curled up into a tight ball on her side. And she didn’t look good at all. Tear stains were still evident on her cheeks, her lips and fingertips were tinted blue, her face was the color of dead leaves, and she wasn’t moving.

“Joan!”

Jane raced over to her, throwing her jacket over the keyboardist the minute she was down at her side. She carefully lifted Joan’s upper body off of the snow, cradling her gently against her chest.

“Joan? Joan, honey, can you hear me? It’s Jane.”

She gave Joan’s arm a light squeeze, hoping to rouse her.

It doesn’t.

The girl is breathing, at least. However, the breaths are coming out very strained and soft, so soft that Jane almost thought she wasn’t even taking in air for a moment.

“Come on, love, wake up. Please.”

Worst case scenarios began to flood through Jane’s mind. Did Joan have hypothermia? Or frostbite? Was she dying in her arms?

The weakest cough snapped Jane out of her thoughts and she whipped her head down. Marbled green eyes peek out from half-open eyelids. A relieved smile comes across her lips.

“You’re okay, love,” Jane murmurs to the delirious girl in her arms, “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

She pressed the back of her hand against Joan’s forehead and then her cheeks. She didn’t have a fever, not yet at least, but her pale skin was icy to the touch.

“You need to get warmed up.” Jane decides. Joan doesn’t react, not that she was expecting her to. They keyboardist was clearly in a daze.

Keeping the jacket wrapped around her, Jane carefully lifted Joan into her arms and carried her back to her car. The entire time, Joan was practically a dead weight, making it slightly harder to hold her, but Jane managed.

While unlocking the car and switching on the heater, she heard another cough from below her and Joan wrenches so violently her arms falter and she falls from the queen’s grasp.

Despite falling a short distance and landing on snow, Joan feels like she just fell onto thousands of jagged, razor shard icicles. A freezing shock shoots through every inch of her body and she opens her mouth to scream, but her vocal chords seemed to be frozen.

The snow and biting winds were surely close to cutting her frail skin open. It wouldn’t be difficult, as she had already opened multiple scabs along her arms and legs a few hours ago and the flesh has yet to mend itself and scar back over. Her fingertips were all chewed up and patchy, too, creating easy access for the festering frost that threatened to swallow her up.

God, she feels so heavy. Like she’d accidentally gotten trapped under a pile of snow. She digs and digs and digs but the snow keeps piling on. She’s no closer to breaching the surface.

Her fingers are numb and blue but Joan keeps digging. She had to get out. She’s got a family to back home- Maria and Bessie and Maggie. There’s people waiting for her, relying on her. Joan digs and digs, ignoring the way her breath rattles asthmatically with every inhale. Icicles must be forming in her chest with every breath. Sharp little crystals are coming to life every time her lungs expand and contract, turning the pink muscles a worrying shade of blue.

She cries, but there are no tears. She’s sobbing for her mother (who is her mother? what was her name? what did she look like again? who is she? did she have one?), for someone, anyone to please help her. She doesn’t want to die. Not like this.

Not again.

Joan can’t remember how she died, but the biting cold feels way too familiar in that moment. She’s been in this state before. Freezing and crying and in pain and scared. In the dark she had squirmed until she could barely even wiggle anymore. The frost crept through every inch of her body as she shivered and sobbed and bled for hours.

Bled?

Yes, she remembers the blood. She remembers something snaring around her chest and then intense pain in her ankle. That’s why she didn’t just get up and run. It kept her there. Whatever those things were. She can’t remember. But she does remember the agony and the screaming and the blood.

The blood was the only warmth she got in the last twenty-four hours she was alive.

What killed her first, then? The bleeding or the hypothermia?

Something roused Joan. She gasped and then sobbed again. Her shivering body is hauled upwards and then set on something that isn’t snow. It doesn’t grip into her back like chilled iron claws. It’s almost comfortable.

Slight warmth pressed against an area of bare skin and she shudders away. She tries to figure out what it was, but, even with her eyes open, she can’t see. A blizzard is raging in front of her vision. Is she still outside?

A distant voice calls to her. Joan moaned softly in pain. Her head lolls back and forth for a moment. The voice speaks again. There’s snow in her ears, though. She cannot hear.

A cough made her entire body spasm. Something painful and thorny and so terribly cold coiled in the pit of her stomach and slithered all the way up to her chest, wrapping her lungs up in all its barbed glory. Icicles, she thinks. A big chain of icicles that are freezing inside of her.

But icicles usually don’t get warm, do they?

No. They don’t.

Joan almost wailed when the coil seemed to light on fire and she was suddenly burning. Her skin was so hot, and yet she was still shivering. The blizzard raging in front of her eyes turns black and her arms go limp first, then her legs.

The voice calls out a third time.

———

Jane doesn’t know if she prefers Joan being awake or unconscious. Being blacked out like she is could definitely be dangerous, but she almost looks...peaceful. Peaceful enough for Jane to move from the backseat to the driver’s side to get back to the house.

She tried to be as subtle as possible, but carrying in a limp, shivering girl is definitely going to be noticed by someone, especially when you live with five other people.

Cleves stopped in her tracks from where she was walking out of her downstairs bedroom. Her eyes darted from Jane to Joan and then back to Jane before they widen in concern.

“Is she okay?” She asks immediately after doing her double take.

“I’m...not sure.” Jane admits, “She was outside at the park for God knows how long. I think she had a panic attack and then passed out.”

Cleves frowned and then looked back down at Joan, whose features have become a lot less peaceful from when she initially blacked out for the second time. Her eyes are definitely shut tighter and her skin is leached of all colors, aside from her lips, which are tinged blue. She’s still shivering very badly. A fever has lit in her cheeks.

“I’m going to go put her in my room,” Jane says. “It’ll be easier to take care of her there.”

“I’ll carry her up for you,” Cleves offers and scooped Joan up from Jane’s arms without the other queen agreeing.

After Joan was settled under an abundance of blankets and the other ladies in waiting were informed of where the keyboardist was, Jane sat down on the edge of her bed to watch over the girl. She brought her sewing materials up with her and decided to busy herself with making something while she waited for Joan to wake up.

While crossing a stitch, a memory came back to her. It was when she was around six months into her pregnancy with Edward and Henry was making her stay in bed a lot more to ensure nothing happened to her. Joan, eighteen year old, baby-faced, scrawny Joan had been one of her ladies that came to see her the most.

The best way Jane could describe the girl was a second-guesser and a follower. She did what all the older ladies in waiting did, copying them and following them like a little duckling. If she ever tried to do something that she decided on, she would pause, go against her gut feelings, and do whatever it was it the “right way”. Jane never liked how she did this. The girl deserved free whim, she just needed a little push.

“Do you know how to sew, little one?” Jane had asked with her hands folded neatly over her pregnant stomach.

Joan, who had been cleaning her room in a very periodic, robotic way, paused and looked at the queen. She seemed to be toiling over what was asked, like she thought she heard the sentence wrong. Or, perhaps, she was just startled by the sweet pet name her highness had referred to her with.

“No, my lady.” She finally said and then turned back to the curtains she was spending way too much time straightening.

“Then I shall teach you.” Jane decided, once again taking her lady in waiting by surprise. She chuckled at the teenager’s bewildered expression, thoroughly amused by her reaction. None of the others ever acted like this and, while she didn’t like how obedient to the status quo she was, Jane found young Joan to be quite charming. “Come, little one. Grab my sewing kit by the wardrobe, will you?”

Instantly, Joan was moving, snatching the kit up and scrambling to the bed, which she pulled up a chair to sit beside. Jane moves over, which makes Joan visibly nervous and earns another light laugh from the queen.

“I’m allowed to move, you know,” Jane told her and she notes how easy it is to make Joan’s ears turn the color of fire.

“I do,” Joan said softly, almost squeaks out.

Jane gives her a soft smile before taking out her sewing materials. She began to explain things to Joan, who listened intently. If she were given a quill and parchment, she definitely would have been writing everything down.

“Careful, little one,” Jane chided gently when she heard Joan hiss in pain, “Are you alright?”

“Yes, my lady,” Joan answered swiftly, shaking the hand she had pricked in the air to ward off the stab of pain. “This is...a lot harder than I was expecting.” The pads of her fingers are stinging against the cold sewing needle. Jane quickly took notice on her struggle, especially when she saw the raw pink patches on her fingertips.

“Are your fingers alright, dear?” The queen asked.

“Yes, my lady,” Joan quickly answered, “They’re fine. Just a nervous habit.”

“Chewing up your fingers?”

Joan dipped her head low to hide the shame in her eyes. She only glanced up because a gentle hand is set on her shoulder, then slides up to her lift her chin. There is worry, but warmth in the queen’s eyes.

“Don’t be ashamed, love. I understand this job must be stressful and you need a way to handle that.” She said, “However, it is not good for you. So, I would like you to come see more often. We can continue our sewing lessons. It might help you get your mind off of your little habit.”

Joan just stared for a moment before, very unexpectedly, leaping forward and hugging Jane tightly. The queen is surprised, but returns the embrace, and that’s the end of the memory.

Jane is pulled from her mind and she blinked her eyes several times to rid the remnants of the past from her head. She couldn’t help but smile, though. She was so unbelievably proud of her lady in waiting, then and now.

Back then, watching Joan gain her own sense of self and branch off from the other ladies in waiting’s routines always made pride swell inside of Jane. Even if she was still timid and uncertain, she started doing her own way of things, and one of them was finally not spending ten minutes straightening the curtains.

One of Jane’s fondest memories is when Joan had presented a lamb plush to her that she had sewn and stuffed herself. She was beaming bright enough to make the sun’s supernova jealous, eagerly retelling the process of making the lamb to Jane, which included getting actual sheep wool and then being chased off of the field by an angry ram. Jane hadn’t laughed that hard in awhile when she heard this.

“I’m so proud of you, little lamb,” Jane had mused, and the strange pet name rolled off her tongue without her even thinking. By the way Joan’s cheeks dusted pink, she assumed she liked it. The girl did look similar to a baby sheep, anyway.

And then there was present day. Joan was the music director of the show. People were following her, and Jane couldn’t have been prouder.

She just hoped she didn’t ruin their relationship with what had happened a week ago.

Jane once again snaps out of her reminiscing thoughts, but this time it was caused by a tiny whimper. She looked down to see Joan writhing in her bed. It takes her a moment, but the girl’s eyelids eventually open.

“Shh, shh,” Jane murmurs when Joan immediately began to panic, “You’re safe, sweetheart. It’s just me, it’s Jane. You’re at my house.”

Joan blinked a few times before focusing her blurry gaze on the queen. The look on her face is a mix between pain, shame, and some other emotion. Jane gently brushed her fingers across her cheeks, which are much hotter than they were earlier, to help calm her.

“It’s okay. You’re alright now.” Jane says.

“Am I...am...am I...dead?” Joan asks with great effort. Her tongue felt like lead in her mouth, swollen, numb, and heavy. Her throat is ice that has barely thawed out. The icicles are blooming again, poking at the skin beneath her chest, threatening to rip her torso to shreds. She wheezed and Jane strokes back the hair that is plastered to her face.

“No, honey,” She tells her, “You’re alive. You’re alive and you’re safe now, Joan.”

“But...”

Joan’s eyes closed again and she strained her brain to try and figure out what exactly happened to her. She remembered the cold and the snow and the pain, but only the pain from the frost. There’s a sensation that’s missing.

She wiggled her right foot and couldn’t feel anything. She took a deep breath next, but nothing was snared around her torso.

Had she not been in the middle of the woods after all?

Where was she before the queen’s house, then?

She didn’t expect an answer. Remembering things didn’t seem to be her strong suit.

Joan takes a few shaky breaths and then looked back up at the woman sitting on the edge of the bed next to her. She can feel Jane’s fingers stroking through her hair, which was soaked in sweat. Why was she sweating when she was freezing cold?

“Can you tell me why you were out in the park during a snowstorm?” Jane asks and Joan looks as clueless as she was.

“Why are you doing this?” Joan croaks out instead of answering. Jane seems confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you hate me?”

Jane’s heart broke at that. She wraps Joan up into her arms and Joan snuggled into her warmth without even thinking.

“Oh no, honey, no,” Jane says, “I don’t hate you. Why would you ever think that?”

“B-because of what I said.” Joan whispers and Jane doesn’t need to ask for context on what she was talking about.

“I will never hate you,” Jane says firmly and then pressed a soft kiss to Joan’s temple, and that is enough to make the keyboardist burst into tears. This time, they flow free.

Jane holds the crying girl close to her, rocking her slowly while rubbing soothing circles against her back. Joan wept steadily, eventually dissolving into a hiccuping, dissociative state of numbness and fatigue. Her eyes, marbled and glassy, are barely open as she drifts in between the state of consciousness and unconsciousness.

“Wait,” Joan rasps out when Jane lays her back down, “Stay with me? Please?”

“I need to get some things for your fever,” Jane says, “But I promise I will be right back.”

Jane is only gone for two minutes; any longer and Joan probably would have started to worry that she scared her off. But she showed back up quickly and helped get the foul-smelling medicine into Joan’s system before laying down beside her. The keyboardist is as cuddly as Katherine, Jane notes, if not more.

“Goodnight, mum.”

Even in her delirious, feverish state, Joan realized her mistake and her entire body tensed up. She prepared to be kicked out, but, instead, Jane kissed the top of her head again and only pulled her closer.

“Goodnight, little lamb.”

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