The secret Garden - fic rec
Dec. 9th, 2021 04:34 pmTitle: apple a day by voksen
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven
Colin Craven/Dick Sowerby
Word Count: 100
Summary: Prompt: "all grown up now"
Warning: implied sex
Title: Short Form Dreaming in Miscellanea by Last_Haven
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby, Mary Lennox
Summary: Prompt: "The secret garden - Mary/Colin/Dickon or Mary&Colin&Dickon + flower crowns"
Title: sharing is caring (the corsets and collars remix) by havisham
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Characters/Pairings: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Word Count: 563
Summary: "Colin and Mary compete for Dickon's attention and succeed in distracting themselves."
Why I Rec This Fic: This children are precious (by which I mean Colin and Mary are both little terrors and I love that, and Dickon has both hands full with them but that’s what you got two hands for)
Title: Nest building by Argyle
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven
Colin Craven/Dick Sowerby
Word Count: 638
Summary: "Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing. (France, 1915)"
Title: A Touch of Magic by soukokudoubleblack
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Dickon Sowerby, Martha Sowerby
Word Count: 700
Summary: "You are magic, aren't you?" Colin demands. He's never been one to let things lie.
Why I Rec This Fic: This subtle magic fits the canon very well.
Title: You belong here by dalula
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven,
Word Count: 1000
Summary: "If I asked who this garden belongs to, what would you say? He had asked them once.
Us, they had replied.
And me? Who do I belong to?
They had understood, then. Dickon was theirs, just like they were his."
Warnings: sex
Why I rec this fic: I love Colin and Mary being little gremlins and bickering, I also love Dickon getting all the love he deserves.
Title: everything's coming up roses by verity
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven, Archibald Craven,
Word Count: 1064
Summary: "Dickon and I will be lord and lady of the manor, and you'll be the old maid," Mary says, tucking a stray lock of Colin's hair behind his ear. "You'll keep our house, won't you?"
Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Title: in that rich earth by brightsidest
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Archibald Craven, Martha Sowerby
Word Count: 1081
Summary: During WWI Mary worries about her boys.
“I just want them back,” she says, as soon as she can control her crying.
“I know,” says Archibald, and she knows that he does.
“I don’t care if they’re wounded or hurt or different now, all that matters is that they’re alive, it’s the one thing I want and I’m not going to get it and why should I when so many people-”
She breaks off, thinking I sound like I’m still the Sahib’s daughter, always wanting things. Archibald shushes her and strokes her shoulder, as if she’s one of his greyhounds.
Title: certains t'ont promis la terre by Las
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven,
Word Count: 1476
Summary: "A decade later, and some things change."
run
“Don’t be a spoilsport, Sowerby,” says Colin as Mary kisses Dickon once on the cheek and once on the mouth, before Colin grabs the front of his shirt and tugs him closer, and Dickon is late for supper after all.
strength
When they were children, Colin preferred for Mary to push him on the swing, because Dickon didn’t respond to demands of “Higher! Higher!” – as if I am still an invalid, he had thought indignantly – but Mary pushed with all her might, and laughed with him.
forever
“I don’t make promises like that, Mary,” Dickon says softly, and somehow she isn’t surprised, but oh, she had hoped.
Title: A Strong Woman by Mary_West
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Mary Lennox, Colin Craven,
Mary Lennox & Colin Craven, Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby
Word Count: 1759
Summary: "Mary Lennox has decided that some people have power.
And some have more than others.
So she's taking it back.
She joined the Suffragette Movement."
Warning: period typical sexism, classim and racism
Why I rec this fic: The handling of class (and race and disability) in canon is very of its time/shitty - its nice to see Mary still herself angry and contrary taking that to help others, it fits her character - Colin also feels like himself though it is a bit sad seeing him like that.
"This. This votes thing. It's not something a young lady should be doing." Colin was becoming more agitated, and slammed his palm on the table. Mary watched him, sure that he was in the wrong role. He shouldn't be a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire with six hundred years of the family behind him. He should be instead a Nabob in a distant Indian province, accepting the offerings of the locals with a disdainful wave of his soft white hand. Just as she had been as a child.
She hated who she had been.
Title: Perennial by avani
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Orginal Female Character, Mary Lennox
Word Count: 1764
Summary: "When Mridula came to serve the Lennoxes, she was not in the least disagreeable-looking. She could not afford to be.
(Mary's parents survive the cholera epidemic and stay in India. This does not mean that the garden, or its magic, is done with her.)"
Why I Rec This Fic: Canons handling of race is horrible, this fic takes the perspective of a character of colour, and allows her to be a full character.
Title: Frostbitten by shopfront
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Mary Lennox, Colin Craven,
Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Word Count: 2155
Summary: "No matter how they'd wished to, they couldn't spend their entire lives at Mistlethwaite and in the garden... or could they?"
Dickon finished his half of the border first. After pressing the dirt down with one last murmur, he got to his feet and headed straight for her. He spoke to her equally as softly, like she was one of the slumbering bulbs he wanted to encourage to grow. “What does it matter, really? Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn’t. It’s just like when you still used to plant the lilies upside down by accident and we hoped they’d turn themselves right way up without us. It makes him feel better. He's worrying himself that you'll have to marry somebody else one day and we'll lose you.”
Title: To Remember You in the Entire by ViaLethe
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby, Mary Lennox
Word Count: 2403
Summary: "Between the three of them, they've gotten their feelings as tangled up as the roses in the garden."
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.
Title: Letters Home by Penknife
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby, Mary Lennox
Word Count: 2437
Summary: "Set during WWI. Colin can't help wondering sometimes how the story will end."
. . . I wish I were more like my mother--oh, not really, not careless and thoughtless and a bit unkind, but I wish I knew how to make people forget their troubles. We talk about the war until I want to scream and go running out the door out into the clean open air. It will be better in spring, when everything is in bloom. The robins and the lilies will know nothing about the war. They will build their nests all the same. I envy them . . .
Title: Cool Evening's Benison by Makioka
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby, Mary Lennox
Word Count: 2544
Summary: "Dickon returns home from war and the magic is still there to welcome him."
"And you're young," Colin adds grandly, the same touch of hauteur that always attends him there in his voice. "You can heal. The magic will make it so," and he says it teasingly, but with that half edge of belief that's always there in his voice. Of all of them, Colin believes in the magic the most. Dickon believes more in healthy food, fresh air and less fretting. He is his mother's son in this, and Mary remains caught between them, as though she still wants to believe but draws away as her skirts lengthen and her hair shortens.
"I don't think the magic can fix this," he says, and if his voice chokes a little bit on that, he doesn't think there's a court that'll hold him to that. Suddenly he's aware of it once again, that empty space between him and Mary. He wonders if that will be all they can see now, but then Mary's hand is there on that pinned up sleeve and it's like an electric shock has echoed down his spine, some prickling sensation and for one second, one irrational moment he wonders if it's the magic, but it's just Mary and as he turns to her, Colin leans into him from the other side.
Title: The Skylark's Song by amoama
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby/Mary Lennox
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby, Mary Lennox
Word Count: 2624
Summary: "In hope of magic at the end of a long war."
Finally they release each other and Dickon sits down on the chair while Colin makes some tea on the stove. “I think I knew today when I saw the sun that some magic was afoot,” Colin tells him. “I should have guessed it was your doing, like always.” Dickon grins at him, face alight, his agreement clear in his eyes. “Aye, yes, I’ve brought you some magic, right enough.” He digs into his pocket and draws out a letter and a pressed rose to hand to Colin.
Title: Those Who Know Secret Things by Arsenic
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Word Count: 4669
Summary: "The older they get, the more complicated the secrets Mary and Colin keep become."
Why I Rec This Fic: While the canons missteps in terms of race and disability are more glaring the handling of class is iffy too – I like the way it’s a subtle theme here while it is still a mostly soft romance focused fic.
Title: So I Could Blend in With the Sky by Voylitscope_speed
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character/Pairing: Colin Craven/Dickon Sowerby
Colin Craven, Dickon Sowerby,
Wordcount: 5281
Summary: "Sometimes, it felt as if Dickon knew Colin's secrets before Colin himself did."
"Where would we be if we just kept walking?" Colin asked in a whisper, looking over at Dickon. "How far could we go?"
Dickon smiled at him in that kind and easy way he always did.
"Don't know," he said, shaking his head. "That'd depend on how much time we spent walkin'."
Colin nodded and looked back up the hillside, trying to see as far as he could.
"I think you were right. I think the moor is calling to me," Colin said, taking a long breath. "I think I can hear it."
Colin had no experience listening to moors speaking — or understanding the world outside his bedroom at all — but it felt like the truth. In that moment, he truly felt as if he could hear the moor calling him to some sort of grand adventure.
He thought he could learn to answer it if he had Dickon to guide him.