The Doctor's Wife
Summary: Victor Fries' decent into madness and obsession.
A/N: Based on and inspired by The Clockwork Quartet's The Doctor's Wife and the current top comments found on the youtube video. Happy Halloween.
Spoilers: Heart of Ice
Warnings: Violence, disturbing imagery, implied character death, minor language
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to Bruce Timm, Mike Mignola and Detective Comics. Italicized lyrics belong to The Clockwork Quartet.
It started with a cough. A cough is such a small, insignificant thing... Victor paid it little mind, offering cough lozenges and water when he could. Then the muscle weakness set in. And the sleeplessness.
Nora. Sweet Nora passed it off as a cold though she must have known better. Must have wanted to spare him discomfort...
The first seizure changed everything.
Monday the twenty-sixth of March
The patient's passing seizures are becoming more pronounced by the day. The underlying cause seems to be a slow progressive decay. If I don't find a cure I fear that my patient must surely fade away...
But I swear I'll apply my science to the cause brooking no defiance I'll deliver her from this malady.
She'll dance again.
He treated as best he could, consulted with colleagues, spent a fortune on medicine and chemicals.
After the first Grand mal seizure she gazed up at him, eyes wet and lips bloody from biting down on her tongue and inner cheeks, and begged.
"Don't let me go, my darling. Hold me safely 'til the morning. Promise, when the lights are fading...
You'll save me."
He forced her into bed in April, when the seizures became too frequent for her to safely traverse the world outside their home and the weakness caused her bruise inducing falls than he cared to count.
He went missing from work. It was not nearly so important as the woman lying in his bed. His beloved, his life-mate, his everything needed him.
She opened her beautiful pink lips one morning to thank him for breakfast and nothing came out.
Tuesday the seventeenth of May
A worrying symptom has reared its head this week. She's been bedbound for a month and now the patient is no longer able to speak. She tries to utter sounds but the grip of the illness is strong and the patient is weak.
On the bed, in a cold sweat... Like a corpse, but she'll live yet. When I find the cure, I can surely promise she'll laugh again. As she did on our wedding day when we danced, and laughed the world away...
Her cold, damp hands gripped in his, Victor promised he would do everything to save her. He swore she would be fine but he saw the fear in her eyes, felt the trembling of her limbs as he held her close. In his mind he could hear her pleading.
"Don't let me go, my darling. Hold me safely 'til the morning. Promise, when the lights are fading...
You'll save me."
"Yes," he whispered into her hair as she succumbed to sleep. "I'll save you."
He started to return to work with more frequency after that. It meant leaving Nora alone but at GothCorp there were supplies he could sneak away with, supplies that they desperately needed at home and later... money. Money to pay for the new chemicals, for the new medications, for the new machines.
He needed these things. Of course Boyle and the others would never understand, but Victor needed these things more than life itself. He needed to save her.
Sunday the twenty-third of June
The patient no longer responds to stimuli of any kind. She's now my only charge; I clothe her and feed her, and nightly I read by her side. For though she's paralysed I know that inside there must still be a functioning mind.
Neatly laid on the bedsheet I can still hear her fading heart-beat. I'll keep her stable and continue my research.
She'll smile again. And I must bring her back to me. In her eyes I can see the gleam; in my mind I can hear her pleading...
She needed him. Needed the medicine, the machines.
She asked him to save her. He WOULD save her. He could hear her in his dreams, in his waking moments as an endless song forever playing almost too softly to make out.
"Don't let me go, my darling. Hold me safely 'til the morning. Promise, when the lights are fading...
You'll save me."
He took more from GothCorp. More probably, than was wise. But Nora needed it; needed him.
Things went wrong. More desperate measures had to be taken. He stole a dialysis machine and regularly filtered out the precious red life from her veins and added chemicals. It helped, for a time.
Soon, all the red life had to be replaced. Her skin was cold and pale, but that didn't matter any more; so was his. She wouldn't care when he brought her back. Nothing would matter any more once she came back.
Tuesday the eighteenth of July
My latest apparatus is the only thing that's keeping her alive... I had to stop her heart. The mechanical replacement will ensure the other organs can survive. Her body is destroyed...
But what nature has neglected the fruit of modern science shall provide! And I've broken every code of practice, but for my love I'd shift the planet's axis.
She'll return to me when she's been repaired she'll live again.
And I SWEAR I can see the gleam in her eyes amidst the new machines. And at night I can hear her whisper...
"Don't let me go, my darling. Hold me safely 'til the morning. Promise, when the lights are fading...
You'll save me."
The Bat. That damned Batman ruined everything; destroyed his best chance at saving his beautiful Nora.
The snow globe with its tiny dancer was the closest he could come to holding his precious wife behind Arkham's cold, heartless bars.
It didn't matter. Nora was being kept safe, Batman had assured him, and all he needed to do was get out and continue his work.
In the glass bauble the small, lovely figure turned and he heard her song.
"Don't let me go, my darling. Hold me safely 'til the morning. Promise, when the lights are fading...
You'll save me."
If only she'd retained the ability to speak. If only he could remember her saying any other words. A lifetime of I Love You's and My Most Beloved's lost to the addictive pleads he swore he could still hear her whisper.
If only he'd heard her better.
"Please let me go, my darling. You have held me through the morning; promise now the lights are fading... don't save me... don't save me."
A/N: fairly self explainatory. The song reminded me of Fries and here we are.