The Dancing Men: Widowed

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: The Dancing Men: Widowed
Author: gardnerhill                        
Word Count: 60                     
Rating: G
Warning: You may get feels on this ride. Previous relationship heavily implied.
Summary: A question that cannot even be posed.

***

Dear Mrs. Cubitt: How do you bear it?

I stared at the sheet. The inked words blurred together from more than my whisky intake.

If I sent this letter, it would tarnish his legacy forever even if I never went to Reading.

I crumpled the paper and flung it in the fire, just missing the cigarette case holding his note.

Comments

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Sob! *accepts hanky*

[tripleransom.livejournal.com]

A lot of emotion packed into 60 words. Snif.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Doubly sad!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

So poignant - the added distress of Watson not even being able to openly share his grief with someone who has gone through a similar experience.

I'm guessing Mrs. Cubitt would have understood but of course Watson can't risk having the letter in existence. And it's rather heartbreaking that it's still Holmes' reputation he's mainly worried about, not his own safety.

[debriswoman]

So sad

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

There, there. He'll be home soon.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a heartbreaking story in 6 words: "For sale: Baby shoes, never used."

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

One of Kipling's saddest stories is "Without Benefit of Clergy" about a British soldier stationed in India who has a secret Indian mistress and child in the bungalows - and who loses both of them to an epidemic even as his fellow officers tell him how lucky he is that he has no wife and kids to worry about. The morals of the time meant that he had to keep his love a secret, so he couldn't even grieve openly for his lost family.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Much of the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s were the millions of closeted bereaved lovers whose status remained "Single" for all legal purposes, if they didn't want to get fired or disowned - and who often watched as their dead lover's families took all his things and left them with nothing. Surely it was those decades of injustice that triggered the push for marriage equality.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

A double sorrow, as was said above - to harbor grief for a lost spouse but unable to even voice that grief in safety.

[alafaye]

*sniff*

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

(offers tea) They'll be reunited soon.

[alafaye]

:)

[tripleransom.livejournal.com]

I watched some of those things happen to people I knew. I think - I hope - it did fuel the push for amrriage eauality.

[mafief.livejournal.com]

All the feels are here right now. ::sniffs::
Man, good job for hitting me right in the heart.

[mafief.livejournal.com]

@*$*(#!!! Was NOT prepared for that! :(

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that thing just sneaks up and clubs you in the back of the head doesn't it?

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Too much firsthand knowledge of that grief that had to be kept secret during the 80s AIDS epidemic.