Chapter Eighteen

There was an annoying beeping sound coming from somewhere in the apartment. Jon furrowed his brow and tried to ignore it, just wanting to stay asleep, but it was no use. He tried turning over to bury his head in his pillows, but as soon as he tried moving, stabbing pain shot through his leg.

He hissed and stilled, trying to will the pain away as what had happened came back to him in a rush.

With great effort, he opened his eyes, blinking up at the white ceiling and trying to figure out where he was. The beeping was still there and coming from his left. He flopped his head over and frowned as he saw the medical equipment there, an IV line going to arm. The beeping, he discovered, was coming from a heart monitor.

Hospital. Well, that explained why he wasn't dead.

He could hear breathing from his right. He must be in a double room. He turned his head, expecting to find another patient in the bed next to him, only to find out there was no other bed. Instead, he saw Robb, slumped and sleeping in a chair at his bedside.

Considering the clock on the wall read 1:15 and it was dark outside, Jon was loath to wake his slumbering boyfriend. With the pain lancing through his leg, though, he definitely needed more pain medication. Hoping the nurse wouldn't wake Robb, he pressed the call button.

Thankfully the light knock on the door didn't cause Robb to stir, and the nurse opened the door quietly, smiling at Jon as she approached the bed.

"You've given everyone quite the scare, detective," she told him in a low voice. "It was touch and go there for a little bit, but you're a fighter, aren't you?"

He frowned at that. "How long was I out?"

"About two days, including the day you were shot," she replied. "Do you need something for the pain?"

He nodded absently as he turned his head to look at Robb. No wonder his boyfriend looked so worn out. Robb must have been going out of his mind with worry.

"Your family left around eleven, but your boyfriend refused to leave," his nurse continued, nodding at Robb as she depressed a syringe into his IV line. "You should wake him before the pain medicine knocks you out again," she advised him. She straightened and smiled at him. "The doctor will be in in the morning to tell you about your injury and treatment plan," she said before leaving the room.

Jon could already feel the pain receding slightly as he turned to look at Robb once more. He really did look like he needed the rest, but Jon knew that if their positions were reversed, he would hate himself for being asleep when Robb finally woke up.

He reached his arm out while trying to keep the rest of his body still, but frowned when Robb was just out of reach to touch.

"Robb," he called softly, trying a different tactic as he let his arm fall back onto the bed. His boyfriend stirred in his sleep but didn't wake. "Robb," he said a bit louder.

He started awake at that, furrowing his brow in confusion before he noticed Jon was awake. "Jon!" he exclaimed, scrambling up and over to his side. He grabbed Jon's hand in a tight grip as his other hand came up to rest in his curls. Jon's heart ached as he realized there were tears in his boyfriend's eyes.

"Sorry I worried you," Jon murmured.

"God, Jon, don't apologize," Robb said thickly, shaking his head. "I'm just so glad you're okay."

"Well," he said ruefully with a little gesture towards his leg. "Mostly okay."

Robb choked on a laugh that was half-sob. "Jon, you nearly died. I just got you back and I almost lost you…"

"You didn't," Jon assured him, squeezing his hand. "I'm going to be fine."

His eyelids felt heavy as he blinked up at Robb, and he had to force himself to keep them open. He wanted to curse the medication the nurse had given him. It may have dulled his pain, but he wished it didn't make him so drowsy.

"You're exhausted," Robb said, noticing Jon's trouble with keeping his eyes open. "Why don't you get some sleep? I'll be here when you wake up."

Jon's lips quirked up in a sleep facsimile of a smile. "Vast improvement over the last time I was shot," he slurred out as he let his eyes slip shut. He hummed in contentment as he felt Robb pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"I love you," was the last thing he heard before sleep overtook him.

#

The next time he woke up, his room was substantially more crowded. All the Starks were standing around, carefully arranged so as not crowd the bed itself. Dany and Drogo were there, too, chatting with Sansa near the window. The only ones who were missing were Lyanna and Rhaegar, who were, presumably, in Rhaegar's room.

Which might be at different hospital altogether, Jon realized with a frown. That would be pretty inconvenient.

It didn't take long for someone to notice that he was awake.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Arya said, calling everyone's attention to him.

"Are you in pain?" Ned asked him in concern, stepping closer to the bed. "Do you need us to call the nurse?"

Jon frowned as he considered the question. His thigh was throbbing in pain, but he didn't really want to sleep anymore. Not when everyone had made an effort to be there to visit him. "I'm fine for now."

The only visitor he had had the last time he was the hospital was Ygritte. He was touched to have a room full of visitors now.

"You are never allowed to get shot again," Dany declared, folding her arms as she glared down at him with one brow raised.

He snorted at that, fumbling with the little remote that controlled his bed and finally managing to raise the head of the bed so he wasn't lying so flat. "I wasn't really planning on it this time. Not exactly sure how I got here after I was shot, actually."

"Lieutenant Yoren said you managed to send an e-mail for back-up," Robb answered. "Said they got there in time to take down Sam and Gilly and get you an ambulance."

Jon still couldn't believe that Sam and Gilly were behind the murders. Sam had been his friend since high school. The other man had been there for him his senior year after he and Robb had broken up and had kept him going. If you had asked Jon a few days ago, he would have said that he had never met a better person than Samwell Tarly.

It didn't make sense to him.

Had Gilly been the instigator? Had she been the one to turn Sam into a murderer?

Thankfully, before anyone could say anything else, there was a knock on the door before a doctor walked in. "Detective Snow? I'm Dr. Thompson. I'd like to give you a rundown on your injury and treatment now that you're conscious. If the rest of you would excuse us…?"

Jon's family shuffled out, but Jon reached out to grab Robb's hand before he could move. "Robb can stay."

It would be a lot easier for the doctor to explain things to Robb now than for Jon to try later. Besides, it was probably a good idea to have someone not groggy and distracted by pain to hear the doctor's explanation.

"Well, unfortunately, the bullet fractured your femur and nicked your femoral artery," Dr. Thompson informed, glancing down at the chart in his hand. "We were able to repair both surgically, but I'm afraid you are facing a lot of physical therapy in your future."

Jon grimaced at that. "How long will I be out of the field?"

His doctor gave him a stern look. "As long as your physical therapist deems necessary. I would plan on at least two months of light duty, and that's after a few weeks of leave."

He wanted to groan in frustration at the news. Light duty equaled desk duty, which meant months of sitting on his ass uselessly while others worked the field.

"But he'll make a full recovery, right?" Robb asked, glancing down at Jon with a worried look.

"If he listens to his physical therapist." he replied. "I assume someone will be around to help him out when he's discharged? I don't want him straining himself while he's healing."

"That won't be a problem," Robb answered, giving Jon a smile. "He'll be staying with me, and I've already arranged to be off work for the first couple of weeks."

"Great," Dr. Thompson said. "Well, we'll discharge you as soon as we're satisfied that your pain can be managed with just pills and you can get around all right with the crutches. Are you in pain right now, Jon?"

"A little," he admitted, downplaying the pain in hopes of being able to go home sooner.

The doctor didn't seem like he was fooled, though. "I'll have the nurse come in to give you some Percocet. If you're still in pain an hour after that, we'll give you something stronger in the IV."

Jon gave Robb a guilty look after the doctor had left. "You didn't have to take off work for me."

Robb snorted. "I know. Dany is already planning on staying for a couple of weeks, too, to help you out, and my parents, Arya, Sansa, and Rickon have already volunteered to be around if you need them. Bran, too, though he fully admits that he won't be much help in physically helping you get around. You actually will probably have so many helpers that you're going to get annoyed, but you scared us, Jon. I think we all just want to be around you as much as possible to remind ourselves that you're okay."

He turned his head to give himself time to blink away his tears, not that he fooled Robb for a second.

"Hey," he said, sitting down gingerly on the bed and cupping his cheek. "What is it?"

"It's just… I forgot what it was like to have a family," Jon confessed, giving him a watery smile.

"Well, you'll never have an opportunity to forget again," Robb told him. "I promise."

#

Jon didn't even remember falling asleep the next time he woke. The Percocet hadn't helped his pain, and with Robb hovering over him with a worried look, he hadn't been able to lie about not being in pain. The last thing he remembered was the nurse giving him the medicine through his IV.

He blinked around the room, frowning when he only saw Lieutenant Yoren sitting in Robb's chair. "Where's Robb?"

Yoren looked up from the magazine he was thumbing through absently, setting it down as he straightened in the chair. "I asked him to give us a minute. I'm sure he isn't far."

"Oh," he said, not knowing what else to say. Was Yoren hear to chew him out? He probably deserved it. He should have seen that Sam was acting suspiciously, and not connecting Gilly with Gillian Keep? That was a rookie mistake.

"So Tarly confessed," Yoren told him with preamble. "He had already gotten the gun from Keep when Hornblower and Tollet had made it the apartment and went in with them without protest."

"I never would have thought he could do this," Jon admitted with a rueful shake of his head. "He's Sam. He couldn't even dissect the frog in high school biology!"

"Sometimes people let things fester inside them," he said sagely. "That's what happened with Tarly, I think. He told us his first victim was his mother."

Jon's head snapped up in shock at that. He had been there for Sam when his mother had died. He had been devastated.

"She had confessed that she had known all along that his father abused him right after the man died," Yoren explained. "He thought she hadn't known. He let that fester for a few months before he finally put belladonna in her tea one day. Got away with it because no one suspected foul play, but I think it broke something inside of him."

So it hadn't been grief that had devastated Sam—it was guilt.

"Then the poisoner met up with the stabber and managed to justify their actions to each other," Yoren finished with a shrug. "Decided they made a pretty good team."

Jon opened his mouth to say something, but wasn't able to form any words. He cleared his throat and tried again. "What's going to happen to them?"

"Three counts each of premeditated murder, and two counts of attempted? They'll get life without parole," he replied.

"And Gilly? Is she really pregnant?" Jon asked, remembering her words about little Sam. "What's going to happen to the baby?"

"Well, if one of Gilly or Sam's siblings don't take him, he'll go into the foster system," Yoren told him.

The foster system. He knew exactly the type of life that could give a small child.

Jon shut his eyes. It all seemed like a horrible cycle to him. Abusers, victims, murderers, victims, it all went on and on and on. No matter what they did, it never stopped.

"Don't think too much about it, Jon," Yoren said, as if reading his mind. "All we can do is catch the bad guys and keep them from hurting other people. We can't save everybody. We have to take the victories we get." He stood up and gave him a small smile. "I expect to see you in two weeks. I'm sure I can find lots of paperwork to keep you busy."

Jon's answering smile turned became a little more genuine as Robb walked through the door.

Yoren was right. They did have to take the victories they could get. And Jon felt pretty damn victorious with Robb and his family back.

Fin.