Fic: To Remember You in the Entire (The Secret Garden, Colin/Mary/Dickon, PG)
Title: To Remember You in the Entire
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Characters/Pairing: All possible permutations of Colin/Mary/Dickon
Summary: A story about three people in love, over four seasons of their lives.
Notes: Written for wanderlustlover at fandom_stocking; meant to take place approximately six years after the book.
To Remember You in the Entire
It rains all through the spring, and there are days when Colin feels as though the world will never be dry and bright, when staring from the windows shows only a dull, dreary sky as it presses low over the moors, heavy with more water to send splashing into their garden.
If there is an upside to this, it's that it keeps him and Mary together, exploring the house or simply sitting companionably over books and picnics consisting mostly of tea and biscuits held in his room, as they hadn't done in the last few years, when they'd begun to think themselves 'too grown up' for such things.
Colin watches Mary pour for them, sitting on the floor in a dress the color of bluebells, and notes that while she sits and laughs with the careless grace of a girl, the face she turns to him is that of a woman.
Later on, when she rests her head against his knee, the setting sun manages to touch the bottom of the clouds, turning the sky pink and orange, bathing her face in lovely warm light; Colin is certain, in that moment, that their garden in full bloom couldn't be more beautiful.
“It will be sunny tomorrow,” she says, her lips curved in a smile, her eyes far away. “All the birds will be nesting, and the earth going green with life, and we can see all the things we planted last year return to us. We can go out and work in the garden. Dickon will be there.” Her voice ends in a sort of wistful sigh, and there's excitement running under her words, more than she's shown in all the days spent alone with him.
Something in Colin's throat tightens, and his hand, poised to stroke her hair, retreats, clenching in his lap.
“Of course,” he responds, hoping his voice doesn't crack, doesn't show any strain. “Whatever you like, Mary.”
***
High summer is warm that year - both boys have tossed aside their caps and rolled up their sleeves to dig in the garden - but Mary luxuriates in it, kicking free of her boots and pulling off her stockings when their backs are turned, delighting in the feel of the long summer grass between her toes.
She delights too in watching Dickon as he works, the set of his broad shoulders and the way the muscles of his forearms shift. His nose still turns up a bit, and he wants for little out of life, but if those are his largest flaws, they are quite acceptable to her.
When a cool breeze comes through, stirring up a riot of leaves, blowing down a bright shower of petals from the old tree with its covering of roses, Mary smiles and closes her eyes, relishing the feel of the wind moving through her hair, stirring her skirts and tickling along her bare legs. Dickon is before her eyes again when she opens them, always there, always hard at work to make their world more beautiful, and if she indulges herself a bit, wishing the feel of the breeze was the feel of his fingers instead, who would know it, after all?
Lost in her reverie, she's startled when something is set upon her hair; a quick feel reassures her it's merely a crown of flowers, and Colin throws himself down in the grass beside her, grinning and raising an eyebrow in the direction of her bare feet. Resisting the urge to put out her tongue at him (one must get too old for such things eventually, surely), she settles for raising her own brows in return, and he laughs, shaking his head and pulling up a bit of grass which he uses to tickle her arm.
“You shouldn't be too obvious, you know,” he says, sobering, following the direction of her gaze when she turns back to Dickon. “Even he will notice eventually if you keep staring at him so.”
Mary flushes and picks up her discarded hat to fan her face, hoping he'll put it down to the heat even while knowing Colin's far too perceptive for that. “Perhaps I want him to, did you ever think of that?” she responds, choosing instead to brave it out.
The look Colin gives her is indecipherable, and the strand of grass he'd twined around his fingers breaks, with a crisp snap that is out of place in this lush space of all things soft and bright and fragrant. “I have thought it often,” he says, in a voice as cold and bleak as the winter moor, rising and leaving her behind, alone under a sun that seems to have grown harsh, the air suddenly still, breathless.
***
For Dickon, every day's an adventure, even the days he's just doing a regular under-gardener's work at Misselthwaite; the days he can find the time to join Mary and Colin in their garden are all the better.
Autumn that year is crisp, with the business of tending the late flowers and putting everything to rights for the winter months much interrupted by the constant winds streaming in over the moors.
Mary complains often of the way they wuther about the house, keeping her up late into the night, though she looks more fresh-faced than ever to him, the wind whipping high color into her cheeks every time he sees her.
Colin though - he's silent and withdrawn, and Mary whispers one day that she's afraid he's slipping back into his old ways, growing sharp and moody, wanting more and more to be left to himself.
“Dinna worry on it,” he tells her, giving her the same reassuring smile he's always had for her. “I'll speak with him, if it'll make tha feel better.”
And not only for her sake, of course. Colin's been worrying him as well - the shadows under his eyes, the way he's pulling himself back from the world, the way he wouldn't sing all through the summer, not even with Dickon prompting him. He loves Colin, as he loves his own brothers and sisters, as he loves Mary, and yet there's something more there, something Dickon knows he daren't look too closely at. Part of him says Mary and Colin would love him no matter what, but a larger part shies away, hides like a missel thrush on her nest; so he keeps silent, and watches Colin with veiled eyes, and dreams when he's alone, walking the moors on his days off.
“What were you whispering about with Mary?” Colin asks when he's approached, before Dickon can get a word in edgewise. His hands are deep in the cold earth, the carefully kept nails rimmed with black soil as he plants bulbs, new life for the next spring; Dickon tries not to watch them too closely.
“She's in love with you, you know,” Colin says abruptly, his trowel digging into the dirt with a vicious thrust, scraping against a hidden stone with an ugly sound as he turns his head, meeting Dickon's eyes.
The wind picks up around them, scattering faded leaves and dried up petals, the dead remnants of the year's beauty; it snatches Dickon's cap from his head, unheeded, because the scales have blown from his eyes now, and he sees. In one horrified, pained glance between them, between him and Colin and Mary, with her eyes on him from the other side of the garden where she's smiling still, he sees how all their hopes have withered and fallen, before any of them were aware.
That night, the wind outside his window sounds of wailing, no matter how he tries to shut it out.
***
There are no great parties at Misselthwaite over the holidays, as Colin's father has remained a private person, meeting his friends abroad when he sees them at all; as such, the only excitement in the house comes from the servant's ball, a small affair by the standards of many great houses, but quite enough for them.
At least, Colin's always thought it so in the years past that he's been able to attend; a dance or two with Dickon's dear sister Martha - and with any other Sowerby girls who might happen to be in the Craven employ at the time - a glass or two of wine, and a giggle with Mary in the corner over the sight of Mrs Medlock and Mr Pitcher having a dance of their own always made his night complete.
This year though, it's different. This year all the snow that fell just in time for Christmas, all the holly and mistletoe and silvery decorations tacked up can't cheer him, can't wipe from his mind the look of horror and pity on Dickon's face when he'd been told of Mary's feelings, when Dickon had figured out without a word the reason for Colin's boorish behavior all year long. Neither of them had spoken another word on the subject since, and the strain between the three of them had only grown. Mary's look of hurt and confusion was near constant whenever he met with her; he tried to make those occurrences as infrequent as possible, leaving her to her own devices, trying to tell himself what she - or Dickon for that matter - got up to was none of his affair.
Not that it stops him from searching the crowd for them; Mary should have been easy to spot, dressed as she was in a vivid green gown, but the room is awash in more muted colors, her bright spark absent. Dickon's nowhere in sight either, and after another (likely ill-advised) glass of wine, Colin sets off in search of them.
He hears their voices before he sees them, coming from the empty library, cold and dimly lit only by a dying fire, their wavering shadows cast high on the wall.
“Tha mustn't think it's any fault in thee,” Dickon's saying, in a soft, gentle voice, the one he uses to coax out lambs and other frightened creatures. “There's nowt thee could've done differently.”
“You don't love me then,” Mary says, and she sounds so lost, so broken and small that Colin longs to go to her.
“I do love thee, very much. Just not as a man loves a woman,” Dickon says, and now he sounds just as miserable as she, and nearly as lost. “Though there's one as does, if thee would pay heed to it. Tha shouldn't turn from Colin so quickly.”
“Colin?” How he wishes he could see her face; Mary's tone sounds surprised, but not shocked, not horrified, at least. “What makes you think so? Did he tell you this?”
“No. But I've eyes to see, and I see the way he looks at thee when he thinks tha's not looking back.”
Colin hears Mary take a breath, as if to speak; then there is only silence, broken by the rustling of her skirts as her shadow moves away from Dickon's. Her voice is softer now, low and harder to hear, making Colin edge nearer the door, until he can see them at the hearth, Mary standing there with the firelight burning up her bare arms, burnishing her hair to gold. He could not leave now, no matter how much he knows he ought, not for all the world.
“You are not the only one with eyes,” she says at last, speaking rapidly, as though she fears losing the nerve to speak, rare as that would be for Mary. “I may have been blind to him, but I have watched you, all this year. And you,” she says, turning back to Dickon, “watch him. I thought it was only because you were concerned for him, as I was. But now I think I understand.”
Dickon says nothing, no denials, no confusion in his expression, only a steady calm as he looks at Mary, his face open and honest as always, with the truth written plain upon it. It's she who looks away first, something between a laugh and a sob escaping her, and Colin wonders at how oblivious all three of them have been, how blind to each other when it most mattered.
In the hallway, he leans against the wall, wondering if this was how Mary had felt moments before, this feeling of everything revolving around so that the world looked different, so that everything strange suddenly made sense, light shining in places he hadn't even known existed.
“It seems so unfair,” Mary says, still standing apart from Dickon, both of them alone. “That we should all make each other so unhappy. It can't be right, it simply can't.”
Maybe it's the wine, or the sense of warmth barely contained by the house, barely keeping the chill at bay, but hearing her words, looking at the two people he loves best in the world standing so close and yet so far apart, Colin knows his place, and moves to take it.
“It isn't right,” he says, coming forward into the light, watching as they turn to him as one. “But perhaps we can make it so.” Standing between them, he takes Mary's fingers with his right hand, Dickon's with his left. “We have always had magic working around us. Perhaps - just perhaps - we are meant to love one another like this, all three together.”
Mary hesitates, looking at her hand in his, then past him to Dickon. “It will never be easy,” she says slowly, but Colin knows her, knows the stiffening of her spine when she believes in the rightness of something, and sees her standing taller.
“Life's not been easy, for any of us,” Dickon says in turn, and Colin knows him as well, knows his stout heart will never fail any of them, knows his nature is to give and give and ask for little in return.
Snow swirls in the blackness beyond the windows, pattering against the glass, searching for a way in, a way to cover the world with frost and ice; but their house is solid and firm, and it seems to Colin that the fire burns all the more merrily for it. “As long as we have love,” he says, looking from one to the other, “we will manage to weather any storm.”
In that moment, he truly believes it, and maybe they do as well. Maybe, he thinks, it can all work out after all. All life needs to grow is a chance, a maybe.
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Characters/Pairing: All possible permutations of Colin/Mary/Dickon
Summary: A story about three people in love, over four seasons of their lives.
Notes: Written for wanderlustlover at fandom_stocking; meant to take place approximately six years after the book.
To Remember You in the Entire
It rains all through the spring, and there are days when Colin feels as though the world will never be dry and bright, when staring from the windows shows only a dull, dreary sky as it presses low over the moors, heavy with more water to send splashing into their garden.
If there is an upside to this, it's that it keeps him and Mary together, exploring the house or simply sitting companionably over books and picnics consisting mostly of tea and biscuits held in his room, as they hadn't done in the last few years, when they'd begun to think themselves 'too grown up' for such things.
Colin watches Mary pour for them, sitting on the floor in a dress the color of bluebells, and notes that while she sits and laughs with the careless grace of a girl, the face she turns to him is that of a woman.
Later on, when she rests her head against his knee, the setting sun manages to touch the bottom of the clouds, turning the sky pink and orange, bathing her face in lovely warm light; Colin is certain, in that moment, that their garden in full bloom couldn't be more beautiful.
“It will be sunny tomorrow,” she says, her lips curved in a smile, her eyes far away. “All the birds will be nesting, and the earth going green with life, and we can see all the things we planted last year return to us. We can go out and work in the garden. Dickon will be there.” Her voice ends in a sort of wistful sigh, and there's excitement running under her words, more than she's shown in all the days spent alone with him.
Something in Colin's throat tightens, and his hand, poised to stroke her hair, retreats, clenching in his lap.
“Of course,” he responds, hoping his voice doesn't crack, doesn't show any strain. “Whatever you like, Mary.”
***
High summer is warm that year - both boys have tossed aside their caps and rolled up their sleeves to dig in the garden - but Mary luxuriates in it, kicking free of her boots and pulling off her stockings when their backs are turned, delighting in the feel of the long summer grass between her toes.
She delights too in watching Dickon as he works, the set of his broad shoulders and the way the muscles of his forearms shift. His nose still turns up a bit, and he wants for little out of life, but if those are his largest flaws, they are quite acceptable to her.
When a cool breeze comes through, stirring up a riot of leaves, blowing down a bright shower of petals from the old tree with its covering of roses, Mary smiles and closes her eyes, relishing the feel of the wind moving through her hair, stirring her skirts and tickling along her bare legs. Dickon is before her eyes again when she opens them, always there, always hard at work to make their world more beautiful, and if she indulges herself a bit, wishing the feel of the breeze was the feel of his fingers instead, who would know it, after all?
Lost in her reverie, she's startled when something is set upon her hair; a quick feel reassures her it's merely a crown of flowers, and Colin throws himself down in the grass beside her, grinning and raising an eyebrow in the direction of her bare feet. Resisting the urge to put out her tongue at him (one must get too old for such things eventually, surely), she settles for raising her own brows in return, and he laughs, shaking his head and pulling up a bit of grass which he uses to tickle her arm.
“You shouldn't be too obvious, you know,” he says, sobering, following the direction of her gaze when she turns back to Dickon. “Even he will notice eventually if you keep staring at him so.”
Mary flushes and picks up her discarded hat to fan her face, hoping he'll put it down to the heat even while knowing Colin's far too perceptive for that. “Perhaps I want him to, did you ever think of that?” she responds, choosing instead to brave it out.
The look Colin gives her is indecipherable, and the strand of grass he'd twined around his fingers breaks, with a crisp snap that is out of place in this lush space of all things soft and bright and fragrant. “I have thought it often,” he says, in a voice as cold and bleak as the winter moor, rising and leaving her behind, alone under a sun that seems to have grown harsh, the air suddenly still, breathless.
***
For Dickon, every day's an adventure, even the days he's just doing a regular under-gardener's work at Misselthwaite; the days he can find the time to join Mary and Colin in their garden are all the better.
Autumn that year is crisp, with the business of tending the late flowers and putting everything to rights for the winter months much interrupted by the constant winds streaming in over the moors.
Mary complains often of the way they wuther about the house, keeping her up late into the night, though she looks more fresh-faced than ever to him, the wind whipping high color into her cheeks every time he sees her.
Colin though - he's silent and withdrawn, and Mary whispers one day that she's afraid he's slipping back into his old ways, growing sharp and moody, wanting more and more to be left to himself.
“Dinna worry on it,” he tells her, giving her the same reassuring smile he's always had for her. “I'll speak with him, if it'll make tha feel better.”
And not only for her sake, of course. Colin's been worrying him as well - the shadows under his eyes, the way he's pulling himself back from the world, the way he wouldn't sing all through the summer, not even with Dickon prompting him. He loves Colin, as he loves his own brothers and sisters, as he loves Mary, and yet there's something more there, something Dickon knows he daren't look too closely at. Part of him says Mary and Colin would love him no matter what, but a larger part shies away, hides like a missel thrush on her nest; so he keeps silent, and watches Colin with veiled eyes, and dreams when he's alone, walking the moors on his days off.
“What were you whispering about with Mary?” Colin asks when he's approached, before Dickon can get a word in edgewise. His hands are deep in the cold earth, the carefully kept nails rimmed with black soil as he plants bulbs, new life for the next spring; Dickon tries not to watch them too closely.
“She's in love with you, you know,” Colin says abruptly, his trowel digging into the dirt with a vicious thrust, scraping against a hidden stone with an ugly sound as he turns his head, meeting Dickon's eyes.
The wind picks up around them, scattering faded leaves and dried up petals, the dead remnants of the year's beauty; it snatches Dickon's cap from his head, unheeded, because the scales have blown from his eyes now, and he sees. In one horrified, pained glance between them, between him and Colin and Mary, with her eyes on him from the other side of the garden where she's smiling still, he sees how all their hopes have withered and fallen, before any of them were aware.
That night, the wind outside his window sounds of wailing, no matter how he tries to shut it out.
***
There are no great parties at Misselthwaite over the holidays, as Colin's father has remained a private person, meeting his friends abroad when he sees them at all; as such, the only excitement in the house comes from the servant's ball, a small affair by the standards of many great houses, but quite enough for them.
At least, Colin's always thought it so in the years past that he's been able to attend; a dance or two with Dickon's dear sister Martha - and with any other Sowerby girls who might happen to be in the Craven employ at the time - a glass or two of wine, and a giggle with Mary in the corner over the sight of Mrs Medlock and Mr Pitcher having a dance of their own always made his night complete.
This year though, it's different. This year all the snow that fell just in time for Christmas, all the holly and mistletoe and silvery decorations tacked up can't cheer him, can't wipe from his mind the look of horror and pity on Dickon's face when he'd been told of Mary's feelings, when Dickon had figured out without a word the reason for Colin's boorish behavior all year long. Neither of them had spoken another word on the subject since, and the strain between the three of them had only grown. Mary's look of hurt and confusion was near constant whenever he met with her; he tried to make those occurrences as infrequent as possible, leaving her to her own devices, trying to tell himself what she - or Dickon for that matter - got up to was none of his affair.
Not that it stops him from searching the crowd for them; Mary should have been easy to spot, dressed as she was in a vivid green gown, but the room is awash in more muted colors, her bright spark absent. Dickon's nowhere in sight either, and after another (likely ill-advised) glass of wine, Colin sets off in search of them.
He hears their voices before he sees them, coming from the empty library, cold and dimly lit only by a dying fire, their wavering shadows cast high on the wall.
“Tha mustn't think it's any fault in thee,” Dickon's saying, in a soft, gentle voice, the one he uses to coax out lambs and other frightened creatures. “There's nowt thee could've done differently.”
“You don't love me then,” Mary says, and she sounds so lost, so broken and small that Colin longs to go to her.
“I do love thee, very much. Just not as a man loves a woman,” Dickon says, and now he sounds just as miserable as she, and nearly as lost. “Though there's one as does, if thee would pay heed to it. Tha shouldn't turn from Colin so quickly.”
“Colin?” How he wishes he could see her face; Mary's tone sounds surprised, but not shocked, not horrified, at least. “What makes you think so? Did he tell you this?”
“No. But I've eyes to see, and I see the way he looks at thee when he thinks tha's not looking back.”
Colin hears Mary take a breath, as if to speak; then there is only silence, broken by the rustling of her skirts as her shadow moves away from Dickon's. Her voice is softer now, low and harder to hear, making Colin edge nearer the door, until he can see them at the hearth, Mary standing there with the firelight burning up her bare arms, burnishing her hair to gold. He could not leave now, no matter how much he knows he ought, not for all the world.
“You are not the only one with eyes,” she says at last, speaking rapidly, as though she fears losing the nerve to speak, rare as that would be for Mary. “I may have been blind to him, but I have watched you, all this year. And you,” she says, turning back to Dickon, “watch him. I thought it was only because you were concerned for him, as I was. But now I think I understand.”
Dickon says nothing, no denials, no confusion in his expression, only a steady calm as he looks at Mary, his face open and honest as always, with the truth written plain upon it. It's she who looks away first, something between a laugh and a sob escaping her, and Colin wonders at how oblivious all three of them have been, how blind to each other when it most mattered.
In the hallway, he leans against the wall, wondering if this was how Mary had felt moments before, this feeling of everything revolving around so that the world looked different, so that everything strange suddenly made sense, light shining in places he hadn't even known existed.
“It seems so unfair,” Mary says, still standing apart from Dickon, both of them alone. “That we should all make each other so unhappy. It can't be right, it simply can't.”
Maybe it's the wine, or the sense of warmth barely contained by the house, barely keeping the chill at bay, but hearing her words, looking at the two people he loves best in the world standing so close and yet so far apart, Colin knows his place, and moves to take it.
“It isn't right,” he says, coming forward into the light, watching as they turn to him as one. “But perhaps we can make it so.” Standing between them, he takes Mary's fingers with his right hand, Dickon's with his left. “We have always had magic working around us. Perhaps - just perhaps - we are meant to love one another like this, all three together.”
Mary hesitates, looking at her hand in his, then past him to Dickon. “It will never be easy,” she says slowly, but Colin knows her, knows the stiffening of her spine when she believes in the rightness of something, and sees her standing taller.
“Life's not been easy, for any of us,” Dickon says in turn, and Colin knows him as well, knows his stout heart will never fail any of them, knows his nature is to give and give and ask for little in return.
Snow swirls in the blackness beyond the windows, pattering against the glass, searching for a way in, a way to cover the world with frost and ice; but their house is solid and firm, and it seems to Colin that the fire burns all the more merrily for it. “As long as we have love,” he says, looking from one to the other, “we will manage to weather any storm.”
In that moment, he truly believes it, and maybe they do as well. Maybe, he thinks, it can all work out after all. All life needs to grow is a chance, a maybe.