Sov Gott

Heartbeat

Why, Iceland thought, does everywhere I go have to possess such drab furniture? What happened to intricate designs? Paintings? Walls that aren't painted the same color as the floors?

It had been hours. Jeff was admitted to emergency surgery, leaving Iceland and Jones in the wait room. Jones had stepped outside to call Jeff's family, placing Iceland in the situation of sitting in a room filled with only strangers, all staring at the blood that coated his front. Noticing his predicament, a nurse behind the desk called him over and gave the Personification a change of clothes. "Thank you," Iceland said quietly before dismissing himself to the bathroom.

"Anytime," the nurse replied, a sympathetic smile accompanying his statement. "Let me know if something doesn't fit!" He called after Iceland, his voice echoing down the hall after the Icelander.

Iceland changed, and while the clothes were certainly not anything he would have chosen, he was grateful to have them. He felt that the loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans that were slightly-too-big made him look like he'd been picked up off the streets, but as he began walking back in the direction he'd come the Icelander found that it truly didn't matter. At least it's comfortable. He had only been sitting on the couch for a moment when a woman approached him.

She was old, and her hair was pulled into a ponytail that fell haphazardly over her shoulder. "Do you mind if I sit by you, dear?" She asked, gesturing to the empty seats next to him.

Iceland looked about himself as if to make sure she was speaking to him, then shook his head. "I don't mind," he answered, picking up a magazine from a side table and beginning to flip through the pages absentmindedly until one page in particular caught his attention. Naturally, it was the news.

In a bolded and proud font, it alerted the world of Denmark's governmental panic. How the nation was beginning to crumble.

Iceland ripped out the page, crumpled it up, and threw it away. Of all things for him to read while in a wait room, that had been perhaps the worst of them all. He set the magazine down slowly, every cell in his body yearning to rip the rest of the magazine into shreds, resistant to let his prey slide from his fingers and return to the table. Yet the magazine successfully slid onto the table and out of harm's way, and he was left to cross his arms over his chest.

The old, bloody clothes he had worn earlier were resting on the seat next to him that was not occupied by the stranger, but the nurse from earlier stopped by rather quickly and stated that he would take the clothes and wash them for Iceland.

"It was quite the scene you two made, the way you came in covered in blood like that," the woman beside him said, though her eyes never lifted up from the page of the book she was reading.

Iceland's brows drew together, and he promptly chose not to respond, instead leaning his head back and letting it rest on the top of the chair.

"What is your name, child?"

"How about telling me yours, first?"

A smile lit up her face, and she shrugged, considering the teenager's words fair rather than cold. "Gudrun," she answered, extending her right hand in his direction. "Gudrun Agnarsdóttir."

Iceland hesitantly took her hand in his and felt a familiar thrum as their skin brushed. She's Icelandic, he realized, though his eyebrows only drew together in recognition, no other hints displayed on his face.

"Icelandic?" He asked, buying himself more time to come up with an answer.

She nodded proudly, her eyes crinkling up as her smile deepened.