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FIC: The Gathering Dark
Fandom: The Iron Lady (2012), UK Politics
Title: The Gathering Dark
Ship(s): Margaret Thatcher/Denis Thatcher
Word Count: 821
Rating: PG
Summary: After sending Denis's hallucination away, Margaret contemplates the darkness. For a prompt at the meme that wanted Margaret/ghost!Denis. No ghost!porn.
Disclaimer: This is a creative work of fiction, composed of fictional characters inspired by the public personas of living people. No injury or disrespect is intended to the persons named. If you've found this by googling yourself or someone you know, stop playing on the Internet and go run the country.
The Gathering Dark
She knows that Denis is gone, knows it deep in her bones, a lingering chill that catches like a shadow on a summer’s day.
She clung to his shade for a year, half-knowing it to be an illusion; when that half-knowing tipped into knowing, she sent him away. Margaret Thatcher does not cling to anything, much less a hallucination, weak and pathetic. He is gone, that is fact, that is all there is.
~//~
With the long empty space of Denis’s side of the bed gaping silently next to her, she turns her blind eyes into the pillow, throws her memories against the impinging dark.
Victories and defeats, allies and enemies, public battles and private moments; all whirl by, making her head spin. They say that at the end your life flashes before your eyes, but she has been living this way for nearly a year: the past walks with her, and she with the past.
“I always came back to you,” she whispers into the dark.
So much more there than Denis would have ever known, alive; party discipline, Cabinet members flinching under a corporeal as well as metaphorical whip, the entire creaking mechanism of Tory fealty being adapted to the hand of a woman by the sheer force of her will.
When she closes her eyes, she can feel the heavy pressure of a man bent over her lap. She can hear the hiss of indrawn breath, as she brings her hand down. She can smell the fear in the air, the first time someone is summoned to her office. She can taste the twinned giddiness of desire and power, as she forces a chastened underling’s head between her legs, to do his fealty to her.
It is not those requirements of her career that she regrets now, to the small extent that it is possible for her to regret. They worked. And she does not regret much, in any event; she is not someone to look back and bemoan frustrated opportunities. She seized her opportunities with both hands, and did things. She has lived a full life, and forced life to take notice of her.
And yet, in the quiet moments of the night, alone in her bed, she sometimes remembers not the triumphs, not the battles, not the hard-fought and hard-won victories, not the thrill of the chase nor the satisfaction of the hunt, but how that addictive public clamour drowned the voices of her children and the smiles of her husband.
Now the children are grown, and Denis is gone.
She reaches into her memory for something to fling against the void, but victories and battles alike taste cold tonight.
She is not, has never been, a mere extension of her husband, in the manner of so many of her sisters. She has burned brightly, soared above him, made a life and a career for herself that fulfilled her and ensured that her name will never die; she has touched the lives of millions of Britons and shaped the history of her nation. She has fought the world, and she has won.
But does that mean she cannot long, dry-eyed, for a universe in which the love of her life did not leave her alone to face the gathering dark?
~//~
I always came back to you, she flings into the dark again, silent this time.
The bed sinks behind her, and she feels the cold as Denis slips under the duvet.
Hallucination, she thinks, forcing the sharp painful knowledge through her consciousness - like a shard, or like the long stripe of a whip.
Denis’s hand finds her hip, chaste and solid, a light against the dark.
Hallucination, she thinks.
And yet...
She is dying, she knows that. Oh, perhaps she has years left. But the part she cares about – her brain, her self, her being – cannot have very long before it succumbs to the darkness.
She has been thinking the way the doctors think, the way Carol thinks – that the hallucinations mean that the darkness is winning, that it is robbing her of herself.
But Margaret Thatcher has never been one for thinking the way others think.
What if her hallucination of Denis is not the darkness winning, not the darkness taking her from herself, but a last kindness from somewhere on high giving her back some of those lost quiet moments? What if she is being given the precious chance to move toward that darkness with some dignity, with the support of her helpmeet in death as in life?
~//~
“You came back,” she says, finally – seconds later, or minutes, or hours.
The hand on her hip tightens, ever so slightly.
“Maggie,” Denis says, “I will always come back.”
The amusement and affection in his voice is shadowed by a touch of the bittersweet, and it is this that decides her at last.
She turns toward him, a shapeless shape in the darkness.
Together, they fall asleep.
~//~
Title: The Gathering Dark
Ship(s): Margaret Thatcher/Denis Thatcher
Word Count: 821
Rating: PG
Summary: After sending Denis's hallucination away, Margaret contemplates the darkness. For a prompt at the meme that wanted Margaret/ghost!Denis. No ghost!porn.
Disclaimer: This is a creative work of fiction, composed of fictional characters inspired by the public personas of living people. No injury or disrespect is intended to the persons named. If you've found this by googling yourself or someone you know, stop playing on the Internet and go run the country.
The Gathering Dark
She knows that Denis is gone, knows it deep in her bones, a lingering chill that catches like a shadow on a summer’s day.
She clung to his shade for a year, half-knowing it to be an illusion; when that half-knowing tipped into knowing, she sent him away. Margaret Thatcher does not cling to anything, much less a hallucination, weak and pathetic. He is gone, that is fact, that is all there is.
~//~
With the long empty space of Denis’s side of the bed gaping silently next to her, she turns her blind eyes into the pillow, throws her memories against the impinging dark.
Victories and defeats, allies and enemies, public battles and private moments; all whirl by, making her head spin. They say that at the end your life flashes before your eyes, but she has been living this way for nearly a year: the past walks with her, and she with the past.
“I always came back to you,” she whispers into the dark.
So much more there than Denis would have ever known, alive; party discipline, Cabinet members flinching under a corporeal as well as metaphorical whip, the entire creaking mechanism of Tory fealty being adapted to the hand of a woman by the sheer force of her will.
When she closes her eyes, she can feel the heavy pressure of a man bent over her lap. She can hear the hiss of indrawn breath, as she brings her hand down. She can smell the fear in the air, the first time someone is summoned to her office. She can taste the twinned giddiness of desire and power, as she forces a chastened underling’s head between her legs, to do his fealty to her.
It is not those requirements of her career that she regrets now, to the small extent that it is possible for her to regret. They worked. And she does not regret much, in any event; she is not someone to look back and bemoan frustrated opportunities. She seized her opportunities with both hands, and did things. She has lived a full life, and forced life to take notice of her.
And yet, in the quiet moments of the night, alone in her bed, she sometimes remembers not the triumphs, not the battles, not the hard-fought and hard-won victories, not the thrill of the chase nor the satisfaction of the hunt, but how that addictive public clamour drowned the voices of her children and the smiles of her husband.
Now the children are grown, and Denis is gone.
She reaches into her memory for something to fling against the void, but victories and battles alike taste cold tonight.
She is not, has never been, a mere extension of her husband, in the manner of so many of her sisters. She has burned brightly, soared above him, made a life and a career for herself that fulfilled her and ensured that her name will never die; she has touched the lives of millions of Britons and shaped the history of her nation. She has fought the world, and she has won.
But does that mean she cannot long, dry-eyed, for a universe in which the love of her life did not leave her alone to face the gathering dark?
~//~
I always came back to you, she flings into the dark again, silent this time.
The bed sinks behind her, and she feels the cold as Denis slips under the duvet.
Hallucination, she thinks, forcing the sharp painful knowledge through her consciousness - like a shard, or like the long stripe of a whip.
Denis’s hand finds her hip, chaste and solid, a light against the dark.
Hallucination, she thinks.
And yet...
She is dying, she knows that. Oh, perhaps she has years left. But the part she cares about – her brain, her self, her being – cannot have very long before it succumbs to the darkness.
She has been thinking the way the doctors think, the way Carol thinks – that the hallucinations mean that the darkness is winning, that it is robbing her of herself.
But Margaret Thatcher has never been one for thinking the way others think.
What if her hallucination of Denis is not the darkness winning, not the darkness taking her from herself, but a last kindness from somewhere on high giving her back some of those lost quiet moments? What if she is being given the precious chance to move toward that darkness with some dignity, with the support of her helpmeet in death as in life?
~//~
“You came back,” she says, finally – seconds later, or minutes, or hours.
The hand on her hip tightens, ever so slightly.
“Maggie,” Denis says, “I will always come back.”
The amusement and affection in his voice is shadowed by a touch of the bittersweet, and it is this that decides her at last.
She turns toward him, a shapeless shape in the darkness.
Together, they fall asleep.
~//~