Denial is not just a river in Egypt

CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE AREN'T IN THE BOOK OF LIFE

Michael burns the entire book. Crowley saves a *single* page. Yet Aziraphale and Crowley persist. Even when God "makes a universe" without them in it.... They still are. They persist. Aziraphale and Crowley are as foundational to creation as God and Satan themzelves (you'll notice Satan also didn't have a page)

John is ok he’s not in any danger and Sherlock knows this but do you think he wakes up in a cold sweat some nights because he dreamt that maybe John wasn’t wearing the vest. That his best friend really was taken from him just like that.

I feel like it would become a thing for him that he constantly needs to reassure himself that John is indeed, in fact, alive and well and still here. Maybe when he has those nightmares of John dying he gets up and goes to his room to make sure John is still breathing, or if John is sitting on true couch Sherlock will come over and just sit and put his ear against John’s heart to hear his heart beating, or if he’ll just randomly grab John’s wrist to check his pulse at times. Because even though he can clearly see John belong alive and well, he needs to feel that he’s alive too.

“warm heart”

One year. It’s been one year.

That doesn’t feel real to write. It can’t possibly be true. How can it be one year since Charles was killed, when he died just yesterday? When he died last Tuesday and four weeks before that and two months ago and every day since that terrible notice arrived.

It can’t have been a year because the loss is as fresh as if I had been told moments ago.

Though, thinking of that day now—when I learned that he’d died and that I was listed as his next of kin in the same terrible moment…it hasn’t been a year, has it? It was January twenty-third that the telegram came. I lived in ignorance for thirteen days. There was a period of nearly two weeks in which the deed had been done, the shell had been dropped, and yet I knew nothing. He was still alive then. For thirteen days he was alive in my mind. Sometimes I wish it could have stayed that way, that they’d never alerted me and that the war had never ended, and I could exist in a perpetual state of hope he would return. What a rotten, selfish thought.

But have I not earned the right to be selfish? The universe has been unaccountably cruel to me, ensuring that his letter only arrived after—

It should have been a gift, that letter. I should have been able to hold onto it, to fill my head with the glimmering possibility of how we would greet each other in victory.

But instead I received a confession from a dead man. I don’t even have a body to bury, just a stray dog tag pulled from the wreckage in Belgium, and yet I have his final words. Words that should have signified the start of something, not the end.

What an awful trick he pulled on me. Watch The Great Chambers disappear. Glance over here at the promise of a spectacle, his affections laid bare, and by the time you look back over, he’ll have vanished. Except I experienced the illusion in reverse and misdirection is neither thrilling nor effective when you can see the strings of fate that are being used to hang a man.

I’m writing a lot of nonsense. I’ve been doing little else, this past year. Perhaps I need to go away, stop pretending like I’m any use to anyone. Perhaps I should go away for a long while.

After her husband died, I gave Mrs. Bowman—Virginia, I should say, we’re friends enough now—a sizable amount of money. Enough to take a year off. I wish I could say it was a purely generous gesture, but even at the time, I was so terrified of losing him and I couldn’t bear to look at her. She put on a brave face, far braver than I would have managed, but seeing her every day at her desk, continuing to do what began to feel like the utterly pointless work of our profession, while her one true love laid dead in a battlefield somewhere…it was too much of a reminder of what he was risking, being over there.

In any case, whatever the motivation, I was able to do her the kindness of giving her a year to grieve. No work, no concerns, just…time. To be honest, I could have probably given her several more years, but—and, again, I am ashamed of this—when she came back and found me as the broken man I am, I took solace in the horrific partnership we now share. She understands what I’ve been through, more than anyone in my life, and was plenty aware of my…varied affairs, to put it one way, to blink an eye at my becoming a widower to another man.

Though, no, that isn’t quite right. That implies there was once a time in which I could claim the privilege of being something more to Charles than a bosom friend. Would that make all of this better or worse? Would his absence be easier to bear if I could recall those close and happy times in the way that Virginia reminisces about her honeymoon? She was—is—understandably overwrought with her loss, but whenever she speaks of Roger, it is with such fondness. She loves him so deeply, remembers him with such warmth, and meanwhile I am sometimes so furious with Charles that I can’t even see straight.

But I miss him. That’s the worst part. I’m so goddamn angry, I’m bitter, I’m buried underneath the oppressive sadness of grief, but mostly I just miss him.

I miss his laugh, which I’d gotten good at pulling out of him. I miss the way he was so particular about things, how he almost never let me win an argument, even if I could tell he knew I was right and was simply debating me for the sport of it. I miss how gentle his voice could be.

I miss his hands. Strong and littered with scars, all the more beautiful for the stories behind them. I don’t have any photos that do them justice. Not that any photograph could do any part of him justice. I suppose I should just be grateful I have a decent collection.

I wish I’d gotten him on film, properly. Not just the test reels he’d tolerate when I bought myself whatever new camera came onto the market.

There’s one in particular I took that captures him in the act of smiling. Not just any smile either, but the special one he has had when he was trying not to smile at me but couldn’t help it. I’d brought my camera to DC and made him stand in front of a cherry blossom tree. He was so bashful at the time, trying to get out of being my subject, but he looks so pleased in the footage. He looks like a film star. Handsome and charming and alive.

Thank goodness I went into the movie business. I can’t imagine I’d have even that if I hadn't. But I do need to be careful with the film. I worry about wearing it out. For as long as I can watch him flicker into motion, brought into shape by light and movement, I can keep him alive.

Good lord, Virginia is right. I’ve become so terribly maudlin of late. Perhaps it really is time for me to pull up stakes and wander the world for a while. God knows I don’t have anything keeping me here. Just a wonderful friend going through her own process of mourning, a beautiful house I can’t stand to be in, and a thriving movie studio that brings me absolutely no pleasure.

And I have years and years ahead of me. Endless decades of my perpetual life without him in it. He told me he’d never be lonely as long as I walked this earth and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t tell him that it was the same for me. I didn’t make him promise that he’d never leave me in a world without him.

There is so much I didn’t say. I’ve spent the last year reflecting on all the conversations we never had and I would do anything—would perform any kind of black magic—to speak to him again.

I would trade it if I could. I would trade the immortal nature of my life to live an ordinary one in a world that still houses his soul.

I’ve survived near-death at the hands of my own illusion, war, fire, a sinking ship—so much that should have killed me. At times I’ve even looked forward to discovering what else I am capable of surviving.

But how on earth am I meant to survive this?

[from the personal diary of J.S. Fogg]

How could I be lonely? I have you.

John, 

Happy New Year, my friend. I’m not even sure my letters are getting to you - I know you, I know you're writing to me, but it’s been months now without a word. Who knows if this will make it across the Atlantic. But I would be remiss if I didn’t write to you; if I didn’t still try to share this holiday with you in some way. Though you would’t think it a holiday with the mood around here. This war seems never-ending and the winters are the worst. 

I’m afraid, John. I’m not ashamed to admit it. This war has both denigrated my opinion of mankind and elevated it. I’ve seen things I’ll not forget for the rest of my life, which may, in fact, be the rest of time. Centuries could pass and I wouldn’t forget how cruel—how depraved—mankind can be. 

I also won’t ever forget the kindness and camaraderie I’ve experienced. Not only from my fellow brothers in arms, but from the ordinary citizens of besieged lands, who are so terribly brave to endure what they have. There is goodness here, still so much beauty left in humanity, but I fear if this goes on much longer, we may lose it. 

But I don’t write to you to share the horrors of war. Despite my unit’s morale, this is a holiday, at least for me, and it brings me no small amount of warmth to imagine you celebrating somewhere safe. Perhaps with a drink in your hand, toasting with a friend, or looking up at the stars in your lovely garden. Picturing such things has made the cold and miserable weather here somewhat bearable. 

But that isn’t all I imagine. I keep thinking of our last New Year’s spent together and I find myself filled with regret, wishing that night had been so different than it was. After you’ve read this letter, you can tear it, burn it—you can choose to never write to me again—but I ask that you do read it, all the way through. Just this once. 

There are things I want to say to you, things I should have said on that night three years ago. I almost did say them, I tried, in whatever clumsy way I could but fear got the better of me then, the way it had many times before. I began to worry that you were doing me a kindness in not rising to the bait. That you knew exactly what I was angling for and were too good-hearted to lead me into making an ass of myself.

That is only one possible version of events I imagine. I’ve had too much time to think these last few years, John—too much and too little—and sometimes I’m tortured by the idea of that unspoken rejection and other times a powerful belief grips me that you were right there with me, on the same page. Thinking the same things. Wanting the same things. Wishing I could be brave.

Who knows, maybe I give myself too much credit in casting the kind eyes of hindsight on my actions. But, with those eyes, so many things that were previously hazy have become startlingly clear. Perhaps I wasn’t fully aware of what I was doing back in ’41 ’42 (just barely), but I’m aware now. Enough to proclaim what I have long known, in my most secret of hearts, to be true.

I have never adequately expressed the depth and intensity of my regard for you. And I can’t here, not in writing, not in a letter that will pass through who knows how many hands before it reaches you. But I promise you that when I come home, I will tell you. I’ll tell you everything. If you’ll let me, I’ll do much more than that. 

I have no idea how you’ll react. It’s very possible that you will be shocked, that I have been successful in my misdirection. I certainly was with myself, choosing not to see what has been there all along. 

But somehow I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve never been able to pull one over on you, John. And, of course, it would serve my interests better if you weren’t surprised, if you’d seen the truth all this time. That is what I hope for. It’s certainly conceivable that that hope is misplaced—perhaps I’m a fool who believes something requited when it isn’t—but I’d rather be a fool with hope than a cynic without it. 

And God, I have hope. 

There’s more I would say, but I’m perilously close to reaching the end of this page. We move out tomorrow—I’ll write again when we’re settled. 

‘Till such time we meet again, I am, as ever,

Your fool,

Charlie

[a letter received by J. S. Fogg]