tagged by the lovely @noblehubris and @tanevthehimbo for wip wednesday<3 here's some tragic fitzier i'm cooking up for my @theterrorwhumpathon prompt: "This is for your own good."
(warning for death, grief/mourning)
Sophia would have made him a fine widow. Clad in black ribbon, delicately dabbing at her cheek with a handkerchief, just the right amount of pearlescent tears rolling down her tragic, beautiful face. She would have mourned him well. Her family, her friends, the public at large, all would crowd in to console her, to keep her safe in their arms. Enveloped in a black velvet shroud, and shielded, and safe, and seen. Allowed. She would have grieved finely, and would have been permitted to grieve, lauded for it, visited like a pilgrimage and pointed at: what an exemplar, what a beacon of sorrow.
James feels like a sinkhole in his grief. Everyone around him suffers for it, is tainted by it, his pain and misery oozing like bile after every conversation he can't bring himself to properly conduct. His grief is a wretched, ugly, howling thing. Was it always like this? Before, with Louisa and Robert, with Sir John? Truthfully, he cannot remember. The death of hisâ wellâ Francis' death, it eclipses all else. And that's the other prong of his problem, another painful spike of this thorn: what right does he have to Francis? My husband is gone, he wishes to say, and there is nothing left for me in this world. He would say it just once, out loud, if it could only be onceâ
But he can picture her saying it, this perfectly bereaved wife. He can imagine her veiled and weeping and engulfed in dark crĂŞpe, a single light from a stained glass windowâ a church, then, a funeralâ illuminating her tearful face, and those precious words stumbling past a sob: my husband, my husband.
James has been wearing all black for months and is never seen without a glassy sheen of tears covering his eyes. He briefly considered veiling, regardless of ridicule, if only because he no longer cared to see the world unencumbered. He no longer cared to see anything at all: they've had a good ten years, the two of them, and they will have no more, and so nothing truly matters. Besides, James thinks he's lived long enough. Too long, now, in this quiet widowhood.
âBelay this, James,â Dundy finally snaps.
That does startle him. Ever since he and Dundy cleared their misunderstandings and resumed their previous closeness, it's only ever been Jas andâ a few times, drunkenly, to his horrorâ Fitz. Never James.
âThisâ this theatre,â Dundy says. âIt is past excessive. You haven't called on anyone in months. You haven't answered a single letter. Christ, man, you must know how this looks. You have to think aboutââ
âI'm mourning,â he says simply.
Whatever anger Dundy may have held seems to dissipate, replaced by an uncharacteristic weariness. Only now does James notice the sunken look in his eyes, the pained hobble in his step. âI know,â he says, and lays a hand on his shoulder. âI know you are. I know it hurts. But Jas, this has to stop. It's for your own good. I'd hate to think what would happen if, if someone... That is, even if no one knows, if someone just thought they knew...â
Dundy, of course, has known from the beginning. One of the three people James has ever told. He pictures again the comforted widow, never alone, surrounded by friends, loved and held and grieving aloud, and his throat constricts.
James takes a shaky, watery breath, and allows himself to say it for the first and last time: âMy husband is gone. And there is nothingââ
