Nimi: Stone
Kirjoittaja: Aladdin Sane
Fandom: Doctor Sleep (Tohtori Uni); The Shining (Hohto)
Genre: surumielisehköä canoninjälkeistä perhedraamaa ja pohdiskelua mut kanssa semmonen melkein hyvän mielen road trip
Ikäraja: k11
Päähenkilöt: Dan Torrance & Jack Torrance & Lucy Stone
Yhteenveto: It takes them a few more years to return to Colorado, but it’s a trip they were always going to have to make.
Vastuunvapaus: Doctor Sleep (Tohtori Uni) ja The Shining (Hohto) hahmoineen ovat Stephen Kingin omaisuutta. Minä en omista mitään enkä hyödy tästä mitään.
A/N: Iltaa. Meikäläisen opiskelu ja mielentila ovat jälleen siinä pisteessä että avasin graduni primary sourcet ja lisäsin niiden väliin tärkeitä post it -lappuja. En kuitenkaan mistään gradunkirjoitussyistä vaan. Krhm. Ficinkirjoitussyistä.
Eikä ole edes ensimmäinen kerta (k15). Mulla vaan on niin niin niin niin niiiin kovin paljon tunteita siitä että Dan ja Stonet on samaa perhettä.
Osallistuu Valloita fandom IV -haasteeseen Doctor Sleepillä.
Ja tässä kun kerran ootte niin ottakaa tästä hellin käsin kokoamani
Hohto/Tohtori Uni -teemainen Spotify-soittolista <3
STONEIt takes them a few more years, but eventually they take a road trip to Colorado together, Dan and the Stones.
They’ve talked about it often. They’ve made many plans, grand and less so. Thought about it with varying degrees of intrigue and dread.
It’s never just been about
going.
The time doesn’t seem right for a long time. Dan doesn’t say it, but for a long time he doesn’t
want it to be the right time, ever again.
He’s scared. He’s a grown man, he can admit it. He can feel silly about it, but he’s learned to at least be honest with himself.
Lucy understands. So does Dave.
And Abra, too, of course.
Abra isn’t particularly eager to go back so close to the place where the worst of it happened. Neither of them is.
So Roof O’ the World is out. Whatever. Plenty of other places where they can appreciate the mountains. So many breathtaking, incredible views.
They eventually stop in Sidewinder.
There’s a small cemetery there.
And in a corner there, a grave. The one they’re really out here for.
John Daniel Torrance, the simple headstone reads.
Loving Father and Husband.
“Was he?”
Lucy does kind of want to know. She surprises herself when she realizes just how much she wants to hear it.
It’s complicated, of course. She knows it. Dan knows it too. It’s alright. It’s only natural.
Abra just looks at the stone, takes it in.
Dan crouches down. He runs his finger along the carving, the dust and grime on it.
They’ve brought flowers. It’s been on Lucy’s mind the whole time they’ve been on the road, small and large, simple and ornate, not quite sure what’s appropriate here. Not quite sure if it’s appropriate at all. It’s spilled over, a swirling cavalcade of leaves and petals and color and doubt and shy shame in the back of Dan’s mind.
He didn’t mention it to her, knew she was embarrassed already.
Of course she’s curious. Of course she wants to see and know, even after she and Dan have talked and talked and talked and even though, in a lot of ways, she already
knows.
It’s only natural.
Abra picked it up too, like Dan knew she would, and she did the bright decisive thing she sometimes does.
So they had flowers when they finally entered the cemetery, Dan and Abra leading the way with much more confidence and ease than they should have had, considering Dan has only ever visited this cemetery one time, when he was very young, and Abra has never been here at all.
Dan looks at the greyish dirt covering his finger and thinks for a while.
“Dave,” he says, “wasn’t there a well a few rows back? A watering can?”
Dave goes back to see.
“Yeah. Right back there.”
“Could you bring us some water?”
It’s easy, then. Weeds, dry and dead and green and living, have taken over, and Dan clears them away just enough to make room for what they brought, using the tools he grabbed while Abra was choosing the appropriate plant. A simple thing. A spot of color. Something that will stay for a while.
Abra is old enough to drive now, so they’ve all been taking turns at the wheel. They could’ve flown, discussed it even, but it was half-hearted at best. Didn’t feel right, somehow.
And it’s been surprisingly fun this way. With Dave in charge of motels and making sure they actually take enough breaks, and with Lucy planning their route to make the most sense, and with Abra graciously letting each of them choose a few songs of their own to add to the road trip playlist, this is a far cry from the last time Dan went this far west.
Or the time before that.
He’s told them about the move from Vermont to Colorado. Their sad little VW Bug, all shot to shit by the time Jack Torrance got his job offer at the Overlook Hotel, barely able to carry the three of them all the way up the mountain.
He’s talked about Boulder. They made an unplanned pit stop there, Abra acting all innocent as she picked up the vague little thought in Dan’s mind and made a few seemingly random turns, taking them off the freeway.
Lucy stopped her furious tirade about reckless driving mid-sentence when she realized where they were. Dan ended up shrugging, resigned, and directed them to the somehow still undemolished building he and his parents had once called home.
“Yeah,” he sighed, only slightly uncomfortable, as Abra parked on the side of the road and they took in the peeling paint and cracked sidewalk.
They didn’t linger. They still had quite a long way to go.
Lucy plants the flowers and waters the earth around them. Dan takes the watering can from her when she’s done and sets to washing the grimy headstone.
Loving Father and Husband, it says, simple and solemn.
“At his best, yeah,” Dan says.
He remembers the translucent being and his wave by the broken rail at Roof O’ the World, the sketch of a bedtime ritual from long ago.
Dream up a dragon and tell me about it in the morning, Doc.He remembers Jack and Wendy in front of the hotel, giggling like a couple of kids at a joke long since forgotten, something Danny was too young to understand back then anyway. He did understand the love in their laugh, though, in the kiss they shared.
He remembers sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola with his Daddy in their home in Stovington and looking at pictures and words, slowly starting to make out what the words meant, and his Daddy excited for him, all happy and warm.
And he remembers the indescribable sorrow etched in what was left of Jack Torrance’s face in those last horrible moments.
And remember how much I love you.“Yeah,” Dan says again. His voice comes out a bit rough. He clears his throat. “He really did try, I think.”
He’s got one photo of all three of them from way back then. It’s black and white and from when they still lived in Stovington. Dan can’t be older than four. Jack was on the wagon then. Even Wendy has a bright, genuine smile in the picture.
They’re sitting side by side on their old couch, Jack and Wendy, and Danny’s right there in the middle, leaning towards his Mommy but sitting on his Daddy’s knee. His father’s boy, always.
The picture used to belong to Wendy’s mother. Their valuables burned down when the hotel blew up, most of their old photos included.
“There were others, and things from later, but, well,” Dan shrugs. He’s learned to let go. Hasn’t stung like this in a while, though. “’fraid I fucked that up long ago.”
“But you still have this,” Abra says, not looking up from the photo.
“I still have this,” Dan says.
He had this, and he often looked at it when the memory of that toddler – God, the kid was even younger than him in the photo – was bad enough to make him want to drink. He’d look at the kid in the black and white photograph with a vertical white line in the middle where it had been tightly folded in half once, Wendy and Danny on one side and Jack hidden from the frame where Wendy’s mother had kept it.
She’d been so reluctant to give back the photo. It wasn’t even that she had no other pictures of Danny or Wendy.
“He’s gone, Winnifred,” she’d say. “There are other pictures for you. What will you tell Daniel when he grows,” as if he hadn’t been there, seen it all much closer than Wendy had.
Wendy had been adamant. And so had Danny. They got what they wanted.
They’d kept the photo framed and open, till it straightened and only had that white line left. It was right there in their every living room. When Wendy died, it went to Dan.
He had an envelope for it. A folder, sometimes. Never a proper frame. Easier to carry from place to place that way.
But he kept it. Couldn’t not.
And he’d look at his wide-eyed four-year-old self in the too-large Stovington Preparatory Academy sweater, and his milk-toothy grin, and his Daddy’s hand keeping him from falling from his precarious, just-for-the-shot pose. Keeping him safe.
And sometimes he’d hear his own voice, his little kid voice, under the bruised diaper toddler’s sleepy drawl.
Mommy, it’d say.
Canny.
Lucy looks long and hard at the photo, at the man whose existence she’s always known on an abstract, theoretical level, even before she had a name or a shred of character for him. Even now, even like this, even though this isn’t the first time Dan’s shown her the photo, it still feels unbelievable to see him.
There’s the shape of his mouth. The line of his jaw. Those she knows, has always known.
Maybe it’s because they’re here. There he is, whatever’s left of his burned down bones, six feet under this unassuming headstone, now wet and summarily scrubbed down by Dan. No soap, no frills. Just a simple gesture –
we came here, we remember you.
John Daniel Torrance, it says.
Loving Father and Husband. Date of birth, date of death.
Thirty-one years old.
“Didn’t plan much, then,” Dan says, a faraway look in his eyes. “Right after. Mom with her back, her head. I was, I was barely six. Not even that. Haven’t been back since they put him down.”
Lucy counts the years in her head. Dan’s got two, two and a half years on her.
Back then, Jack Torrance must’ve looked pretty much the way he does in Dan’s old photograph. Not a bad looking guy.
A literature guy, too. A writer.
Lucy thinks she understands some of the appeal her mother must’ve felt.
Her first impression had been that of a young girl falling for an older man, but the year carved in the stone doesn’t lie. Sure, Jack had been older than her mother, but not by much – in the end, he really wasn’t all that
old.
Hell, he was almost twenty years younger than Lucy herself is now.
She thinks she might understand why the locally acclaimed,
Atlantic Monthly and
Esquire published writer, who by all accounts was charming and intelligent when he wasn’t off his tits drunk, was drawn to the by all accounts also quite intelligent and fun-loving daughter of the celebrated poet Concetta Reynolds.
She wonders if she had plans. If she thought it might last.
She wonders if Jack Torrance ever thought of leaving what he had.
She wonders if her mother and Wendy Torrance ever ran into each other. If they knew.
Loving Father and Husband, the carving in the stone proclaims.
“Do you guys want pictures?” Abra breaks the silence gently.
Lucy looks at Dan. Dan shrugs.
“Sure.”
Abra takes a photo on her phone and sends it to their group chat.
It’s just the two of them, Dan and Lucy, with their father’s grave between them. Sunlight shines on the damp stone, in the letters set in it. Their faces are solemn and undeniably related.
Surprisingly light, too. Not half as grim as Dan feared.
They might print this one out later. Maybe even frame it.
They’d have to see.
“Dad was from New Hampshire originally,” Dan says, apropos of nothing, when they’re well on their way back home. It’s his turn to drive. Dave’s sitting on the passenger seat, and the girls are asleep in the back. “Berlin. Mom, too.”
“Huh. Small world,” Dave says.
“Nah,” Dan says. He gives Dave a quick look out of the corner of his eye. “It’s a wheel, Dave. Ka’s a wheel.”
“Not going to ask.”
“Not going to tell.”
They share a companionable smile in companionable silence.
It’s taken a while, but they, too, have grown quite close. Lucy’s boys, as she likes to call them. Dave appreciates the work Dan does with the program and with the elderly people at the hospice. He loves to have someone he can double team with to bombard Abra with dad jokes.
And Abra –
It’s better. Much better. She’s still working on it, but it’s better.
They all help.
Dan too.
He thanks Whoever every time he’s reminded that she’s not scared of him anymore.
He taps absent-mindedly at the wheel and smiles at the road, his girls – his
family – in various stages of consciousness around him.
It’s nice to belong.
