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“Hey Jon, what’s this?” Sansa’s enquiring, unnervingly caring voice floated through the partition dividing his kitchen from his living room.
“What’s what?” he managed to muffle out from his slouched position on his couch, a place he wasn’t keen to move from any time soon.
“This.” she answers appearing around the corner and waving an envelope at him.
“Oh. That.” His voice is gruff as he drags himself into a respectable, normal-person sitting position while using all of his internal will-power to stop his face from flushing with embarrassment.
“It’s, ah, it’s nothin’. Just some stuff I needed to sort out from back there. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”
He can see Sansa eyeing him warily, searching for the truth of his statement.
Her wary looks had become fewer – thanks the gods – every time she made these self-appointed ‘visits’ (which were really just her weak cover for checking on him, bringing him groceries, and cleaning up the worst of his perpetual mess), but this one was long and searching like the ones from back when he’d first moved.
He sees her eyes roam over the dent in the couch cushion where he’d just been sprawled, his wrinkled, admittedly slightly stained, t-shirt, his less than trimmed beard and his sunken eyes.
He plasters what he really hopes passes for a winning, and convincing smile on his face and stares her down, desperately needing her to drop it.
Why had he even written the gods damned thing? Why the fuck had he addressed it? And why the fuck had he addressed it there?
Well, he knows why he’d addressed it – all that precision, attention to detail, “Dot every I and cross every T” training he’d received still dictated so much of who he was, and what he did no matter how much he wished it didn’t anymore.
And he knows why he’d addressed it there – that had been the head space he’d been in when he’d written the stupid thing. So much so that it had really almost truly felt like he had been back there – he’d addressed it on autopilot (no name, thank fuck, or Sansa would be looking at him even more strangely than she was right now if she thought he was addressing envelopes to himself). By the time he’d turned it over to write the return address the bells from the church on the corner had shaken him out of whatever state he’d been in and so, back in the present, he’d written this address. His new address.
So, he can answer the last two questions to his own satisfaction.
But as to why he’d written it in the first place? He still doesn’t have an answer to that. He doubts he ever will.
Finally, finally, Sansa shrugs and says “alright,” in a chirpy tone of voice, and their standoff is at an end.
She leaves not long after and apart from some residual discomfiture that she’d nearly found out what he’d done he doesn’t think about it again.
Not again, that is, until two weeks later when he decides to destroy the blasted thing and can’t find it anywhere. That’s when Sansa helpfully informs him that she’d taken it upon herself to post it thinking that it had been something important he’d needed to actually send. But she was worried that he would never get around to it. Being as he was.
Angry at the invasion, mortified at the possibilities doesn’t even begin to cover what he feels at this news.
The only comfort he has is that there is no name on the address.
Mail doesn’t get delivered if there is no recipient name. Right?
Right?
He’s sure it doesn’t.
What he doesn’t know is that that surety comes from his poor interpretation of misremembered Elvis Presely ‘Return to Sender’ lyrics.
He won’t realise that for a while.
*
Her new place reflects the way that she feels as though it were a mirror of her. Whether this is a coincidence, or a subconscious choice is for psychologists to debate. She doesn’t have the head-space for such questions right now.
A run down, crappy, little place isolated from the rest of the neighbourhood by some overgrown trees and a path littered with all manner of loose stones and potholes upon which to trip and fall.
It is barely bigger than a bed-sit, but it had made it over the low bar she had set while looking, and fit her only two criteria. It was available immediately, and the lease was month to month. Her reasons for needing those two things are her own – not that she could properly articulate, or even understand them all even if she wanted to try.
Which she didn’t.
Her new place is bleak as all fuck. But she doesn’t really care, because she doesn’t really notice.
Slowly, she begins to unpack. With every item that she pulls from a box and puts down in her new place she thinks of something she has lost. A blanket – her confidence. A vase – her self-respect. A lamp – her sense of security. A kettle – her optimism. A book – her baby boy.
Drogo had given her as many things as he had taken from her, but the things that he had given her were gifts that no person wanted to receive; bruises, humiliation, fear.
He had only ever given her one thing that she truly wanted. And she had lost him before she had even had the chance to hold him.
Her arms were empty of the son they craved, and her mind was full of things she did not.
She goes on like this for days. Systematically, unhurriedly unpacking the last remaining vestiges of her old life into the seeming crucible of her new one.
Eventually she finishes – though an impartial observer would never opine that a person lived, truly lived, in that house if they were asked to wager about it.
A week or so goes by and, methodically, unemotionally, detached, she goes about living her new life.
Part of her robotic routine – the part relevant here – is that every day, upon returning home, she opens her mail box and swipes her hand inside to check for post.
She does this more by rote than any real expectation of having received anything. She has only just moved. So there was no way she would have gotten anything from either Frank or Sandra – her two most faithful correspondents – yet. Because she hadn’t quite gotten around to changing her address with her phone company (Frank), or her bank (Sandra). So, no, she was not expecting to hear from her most steadfast, and only, correspondents.
Her only correspondents.
A pathetic truth, and a painful consequence of remaining too long in an abusive, controlling relationship – you lose contact with all of your friends whether you wanted to or not.
But today is different. Today when she performs her cursory sweep of her hand inside the tetanus-just-waiting-to-happen box intended for mail she feels something.
Shocked from her somnambulance by this small change in her routine she pulls it out and retrieves, discovers, an envelope.
No name for the adressé, though unmistakably addressed to her address.
Curious.
Turning it over as she walks inside, she notes that the return address is a Kings Landing one.
For one horrible, breathless moment she thinks that it is from Drogo.
But she manages to calm herself down by rapidly, cyclically, repeatedly whispering two key facts to herself: Drogo is gone. He can’t hurt her now. Drogo is gone. He can’t hurt her now. Drogo is gone. He can’t hurt her now.
Once her heart rate has finally returned to some semblance of normal, she considers the envelope again.
It is not addressed to her… but it is addressed to her house.
More significantly, it came from Kings Landing. Perhaps the lack of her name in the address is one of those measures that the authorities assured her that they would take for her protection just in case.
Just in case of the very unlikely, but still worth maintaining protection against, possibility that someone affiliated with Drogo tried to come after her.
She cannot afford not to open it.
For her own safety, for her own peace of mind she needs to open it: it could contain important information.
Sinking into her battered, second-hand arm chair she slides a shaking fingernail under the seam, tears the envelope open and pulls out one, single, handwritten sheet of paper.
Even more curious.
Dear me,
Cunt fuck therapist made me do this… (at this she cannot help herself, she bursts out into the first real laugh she has had in a very, very long time). What an asshole. It’s outright mad, ridiculous bullshit.
She stops then and takes a deep breath. She knows what this is now. Or, at least, she thinks she does. And it certainly was not meant for her. She knows she shouldn’t, she knows how wrong, how violating it is to this person who she doesn’t even know. But the sheer, unassuming helplessness of the next line
‘But I will try absolutely anything at this point.’ compels her to keep on reading.
He “claims” (yeah, I used air quotes. I won’t apologise for it. The situation demands them. This dumbass guy and his crackpot theories demand them. Though… I guess when they’re in writing they’re just ‘quotes’, not ‘air quotes’… alright, alright, avoidance attempt OVER) it will heal the mind or some such crap. He reckons I need to talk about it all to someone who understands. Arrogant prick reckons he understands. Sure, yeah, he might understand the science or whatever of it but what fucking good does that do me? He’s the one who told me that feelings were not rational (in some pathetic attempt to get me to stop trying to rationalise everything no doubt) – so why the fuck would he think that his rational understanding would help my irrational thoughts and feelings? Idiot.
Then he suggested I go to one of those groups where other hopeless cases like me sit around in a circle and share what happened to them. This (fucker) claims he has an insight into the human mind yet he can’t see how completely unappealing that would be to me? He’s a joke. I should stop seeing him. He costs as much as he talks which is a lot. Shouldn’t he cost as much as he listens? Or as much as he helps? If he cost either of those things I would be several hundred dragons richer right now and I would still feel the same as I did the first day I met him. Cunt.
If I’m being generous, not that I’m bloody inclined to be, I can see why he thought that suggestion would have merit after I told him he couldn’t damn well understand because he’d never damn well seen and done and been through what I had. So his natural progression was to suggest I talk to other people who had (cop out if I’ve ever seen one). But if he knew me even a little he would know I have no intention at all of opening up all I think and all I feel and all I hate about myself and what happened to me to a bunch of people I don’t know and can’t trust.
All I really know is that I’m tired of being sick, and I’m sick of being tired. And that tosser Robbie Williams suddenly makes sense to me for the first time with his screeching of “I don’t wanna die, but I ain’t keen on living either.”
No, no it’s not… it’s not that… Whatever it’s not like that. I’m just, I’m sick of feeling so alone and honestly, writing a letter to myself really, really isn’t helping with that feeling.
So, yeah.
From me.
Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears by the time she is finished reading.
If it weren’t for the blatantly obvious fact that this wasn’t her handwriting she might have thought she had written this letter herself.
Whoever did write it, her heart goes out to him.
She is almost certain it’s a him. Not only because of some of the language used, but the actual handwriting itself.
‘Boy writing’ she used to call it as a kid when she’d teased her best friend about his – mouthing it widely and toothily across the classroom. He would always just grin, shrug, and jerk his head at her which she knew was his nudge to get her on to writing back to him as they wiled away their lessons immersed in silly little notes of nothing (and everything) to one another.
But it’s something slightly more than that. This man, she cannot help but think, but feel that she understands him. Properly. On a deep, affiliated level. He’s angry. That much is obvious. He’s angry about whatever it was that happened to him. And he uses piss-poor attempts at humour to cover that up. But she can tell that he’s scared too. That he’s scared, and alone. That he doesn’t want to be alone but right now he doesn’t know how to be any other way. She understands all of this because she feels the exact same way.
Oddly, it is also a behavioural response pattern that she knows well, or at least, remembers well. That same childhood best friend she’d once passed a million notes with always reacted in pretty much the exact same way. Though, to be fair, those reactions were to slights only really considered serious to the under 12s: a stolen pencil, cheating at Cluedo, her drawing ‘girly’ pictures on the front of his notebook.
Remembering that, from a time long since passed, makes her heart ache anew.
How strange it is – perhaps even serendipitous – that this mystery writer had moved to the city she had run from, and she, it seemed, had moved to exactly where he’d run from.
It’s not the place, never the place that’s the problem. If your mind is of a wont it can make a hell out of paradise.
And it seems that both his, and her minds are of that wont.
Hours later, still sitting in the same chair, letter held gently in her hands she wonders about the outcome. He’d written that it hadn’t helped… But maybe, maybe it had just a little.
Or maybe it could…
She, too, is willing to try just about anything at this point.
And there is something - something undefinable and ephemeral - but something, some reason why she feels close to this letter writer and wants to share even a small part of their journey, have this small thing in common with them.
So, she stands up, takes out a sheet of paper, and starts writing.
Dear me,
*
Jon is having a bad day.
Though, sometimes he supposes he should stop calling them that. They’re no different to almost every other day he seems to have now. Perhaps he should just start calling them ‘days’ and save the adjective for when he is having a ‘good’ day.
It’s been this way for months. Ever since he had been discharged from the hospital.
‘Lucky’, the doctors had said. ‘Lucky’ they’d called him. He, according to a rather large medical team, was one felicitous guy.
So, so lucky to be alive.
He didn’t feel lucky, of course.
He felt quite the opposite.
He still doesn’t feel lucky. But he thought it would seem ungrateful to say (or shout as he rather felt more like doing) that to them.
Some of the time he honestly, truly wished he had died.
If he had then people would have thought him a hero, and they wouldn’t have had to grow to know (because he wouldn’t be around to introduce them to) the miserable, bitter, shell of a person he is now – with ideals that don’t align perfectly with his actions.
He’s never sure which it is that bothers him more. Is it the being alive, or is it the things he did under orders in a war he isn’t at all convinced was worth fighting?
But today is particularly bad.
Because something has disrupted his normal.
Today is the third day in a row that an unidentified female, the same unidentified female is spending an inordinate amount of time loitering outside of his house.
Were he less able to keep his paranoia under control he would have called it stalking. Or staking out.
But he keeps himself under control by repeatedly muttering to himself that that cannot possibly be what this is.
So instead, he is annoyed at her uninvited obtrusion to the little, tiny bit of peace that he has been able to carve out for himself.
And so today, today he is going to put a stop to it.
He throws on an old hoodie and, breathing deep, doing everything he can to keep his fight or flight instincts under control, he opens his front door and walks down the path to confront her.
*
She came to Kings Landing because there were a few more things that she needed to pick up…
Yes, technically she could have sent for them but she prefers to do these things for herself thank you very much.
Her trip has absolutely nothing to do with the strong pull of empathy she feels towards a certain nameless, faceless resident of this city.
She had certainly never intended to come to this address.
To actually seek out his house.
She’s not insane.
But…
she felt she owed him something.
No matter how inadvertently, she had been privy to some of his deepest thoughts and feelings.
She feels inexorably pushed towards reciprocity. She doesn’t understand the reason why.
And so she’d come here three days in a row. Envelope in hand, intending to just drop it in his mailbox and run. Perform that act of reciprocity, let him know he was not alone in what he was feeling, and then walk away forever.
Each time she had stalled herself. Frightened. Chosen to leave and try again tomorrow instead.
Today it seems that that choice has been taken from her.
The front door of the house opens and a man in a hoodie steps outside and strides purposefully, head down towards her.
Oddly, she is not even slightly afraid. This from a woman who has been jumping whenever a male – known or unknown – has been within two metres proximity to her for months.
She’s watched Pride and Prejudice too often (the mini-series, not the film thank you very much) – It doesn’t take a psychoanalytic genius to guess at why she is so attached to that story: The mean guy isn’t really mean after all, see? You just misunderstood. He wants to change. He can change. He will change; and all because he loves you.
Urgh.
But that is not the point right now.
The point right now is that she has watched it so often that apparently it has become some sort of godsawfully embarrassing default setting and so, when the man approaching her from his house finally lifts his head and she catches a glimpse of his face she holds in her gasp, pushes out, and against the countless flashes of images which threaten to assault her, and gathers and represses her emotions (as well as any and all visceral responses she is having) tightly enough to make any aristocrat jealous.
Her voice does stutter slightly, some things cannot be helped she supposes, but nonetheless, out it comes, slightly modified for her own situation, the opening crescendo of Episode Four:
His wide, shocked eyes meet hers.
She, as mentioned, is in full Darcy-mode.
“I have been walking this street some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading this letter?”
Gods help her. Her delivery is as ardently charged, and as ardently suppressed as Darcy’s himself as she thrusts her envelope into his hands.
Red priestess please burn her she even, gods she is a mortification, executes a ridiculous courtly bow to him before fleeing the scene in consuming shame.
Once she is well gone she doesn’t know what to think…
Is it possible to simultaneously feel both more, and less alone than ever before?
*
He wonders if he is having one of his very vivid dreams.
The weighty, real feel of the envelope in his hand – no adressé, but addressed to this address with an accompanying return on the back to one he knows all too well assures him that he is not.
Can he even trust what he sees anymore?
He has wondered about it. But never really minded whether he could or not.
Not until now.
Now he desperately hopes that he can trust his senses. His memory.
He stumbles onto his couch, his legs fairly giving out under him.
He tears open the envelope and begins to read:
Dear me (you),
Someone else’s cunt fuck therapist told them to do this. Despite himself he barks out a loud, true, cathartic laugh. The first since only the gods know when. They told him (I’m guessing by the atrocious handwriting) – another loud bark of a laugh – it was healing for the mind or some such crap. I’m devastated to say, but I don’t think it worked for them. Or at least, not completely – I’d like to think, I’d like to hope it helped them make some progress no matter how many non-sequiturs they managed to shove into a short missive. I don’t know if it will work for me either… but I’ll try anything at this point. I really do hope it works…
This is strange. I have been sitting here for half an hour with nothing more written, though not for lack of trying. It doesn’t make sense.
I used to write all the time. Notes to friends. Journals filled with hopes and dreams. Words and words – so many words. It’s funny that I was so prolific before anything had really happened to me. Writing is easier when there is nothing to say. Or… what is that saying? ‘When thoughts are few, words are many’ something like that… Maybe that is it.
Gods!! I used to be so carefree. What the hells happened? Besides, you know, all of the obvious.
Like my unknown letter writing friend someone ‘kindly advised’ me to talk to other people who had been through what I had. But like them, I cannot see the value in that either. Just because two people have the same experience doesn’t mean they come out of it feeling the same way or needing the same things.
If you’re reading this, I guess you know my purpose was two-fold. I was willing to try anything – even the Dear me, From me technique your cunt therapist recommended – my second purpose… well… I just think I might know some of how you feel. Not the why of it, not the how, but the feelings themselves. I want you to know that you’re not alone.
I mean… you are…and so am I… but…
Anyway…
Somewhere in the world there is someone you don’t know, he scoffs slightly at that, who maybe can understand you a little.
If I’m ever brave enough to post this then you’ll hopefully know that.
From me.
While he is reading his fingers are fervently tracing the letters, the words. Taking in their desired intention and so, so much more.
He is accosted by images, memories, feelings once he reaches the end.
By the time he is finished reading he knows exactly what he needs, what he wants, to do.
*
It’s a few weeks later and Dany is shuffling down her broken path back to her crappy place at the end of the day.
As usual, as she approaches the second most lethal pot-hole the unreliable, flickering security light flashes to life.
But this time is different.
The scene has changed.
Someone is there sitting, head down, on her front steps.
She cannot remember ever having felt so calm.
“Jon.” She gasps. It comes out as nothing more than a strangled whisper, but he hears her. He has always heard her.
His head shoots up and he is on his feet in a trice staring intensely at her, his eyes locked on hers.
“Dany.” He breathes out, almost like a sigh. A barely imperceptible smile – an echo of the one she remembers so well – lifting slightly at his lips.
Barely a second passes and then they are barrelling towards one another eagerly. But… as if by mutual agreement, they both come to an abrupt halt when there is a foot of distance between them.
They may not have seen one another for nearly twenty years - but from their exchange of a single, anonymous letter each, they, through shared reactions, if not experiences, have come to intimately know each other once again. Know each other like they did when they were 11 and happy and full of joy.
Now, knowing one another like they do, they recognise the potential need for caution – they respect whatever boundaries the other may have put in place for themselves in order to try to feel safe.
Both move their arms as though through feet of snow – slowly and heavily – eyes focused intently on the other, expressions vulnerable.
After an infinitesimal amount of time they make contact:
First, tingling fingertips. Second, warmly enclosed wrists. Third, the smooth, caring, caressing massage of hands gliding strongly up arms.
Then, sudden, but sure – so sure – arms wrapped around one another tight.
Tight.
Supporting.
Right.
The hug feels like bubble-gum and hopscotch. Tree huts and running races. Laughter and sunshine. Wide, carefree smiles and secret notes being exchanged. It feels like the past. It feels safe.
Slowly, after several long, gloriously long minutes spent absorbing that warm, embracing feeling they each draw back a little – not enough to relinquish the sheltering contact – just enough to be able to look upon one another.
The gaze feels like understanding and acceptance. Patience and care. Hope and possibility. Wide, open eyes and unwavering trust. It feels like the future. It feels safe.