hyel (hyel) wrote in multi_fiction, @ 2009-01-17 10:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | anne green gables, au, gen, rated: general, weekly promotion challenge |
Wishes Are No Horses, part 6 (Anne of Green Gables)
Title: Wishes Are No Horses, part 6
Author's Name: Hyel
Disclaimer: Anne of Green Gables (c) L.M. Montgomery.
Warnings: AU.
Ratings: general
Summary: With no Anne in Avonlea, Minnie-May is dead, and Diana has resolved to be a scholar. Ms Stacy fans the flames. 300 words
Note: These are now actually out of chronological order. Oh well.
Want of sleep still clinging around the edges of her consciousness, attendant to all the exhaustions of the past months, Diana made her way through the crowd, almost afraid to the list of Queen’s graduates. She clung to Jane Andrews’ arm, nails almost digging in her flesh, and tried to draw courage from her stolidity.
She lifted her eyes reluctantly, and stared. Fourth! She was fourth on such a long list! The smile trickled slowly onto her face, and solid composed Diana Barry took her friend by the hand and twirled her around, laughing for joy.
‘Jane, oh Jane, you know what this means? Redmond! If Mama will only say yes, Redmond! I’ll be a fully certified nurse!’
Jane, embarrassed, stopped her twirling, but when she embraced her and gave her congratulations, there was genuine enough warmth in her smile. Jane would not enroll; she intended to teach school instead.
Diana ran next to give her news to Miss Stacy, who was there to cheer her pupils’ success, and who, it turned out, had never doubted Diana’s. ‘But, Diana,’ said Miss Stacy then, and changed Diana’s life forever, ‘why settle for nursing; why not go for a doctor of medicine?’
Diana mouth formed a perfect O, and her tongue a dozen objections – she was not smart enough, scholarliness came to her only with difficulty, what would people think of a woman doctor; what about marriage, the future?
And yet... beyond all this she saw her little sister’s casket. It was an “if only” that outshone all objections: if only I could have saved her. If only I could save another such child, someone else’s sister and daughter!
Diana closed her mouth, and it formed that determined line that brooked no argument; the expression she might never have had – if only.