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"Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't."
-Stephen King, Hearts In Atlantis

He slept beside her. The muted light of London through the window cut the shadows of the night, and she watched him sleep, his nose pointed towards the ceiling, his mouth open ever so slightly, and now and again he would snort a breath that would break the silence like a crack of thunder through a storm-addled sky.

Whenever he snored, she would find herself involuntarily clutching the corner of her pillowcase. Next to her, she would hear the feathers of her constant companion ruffle. Often, the noise would surprise them so that small squeak, not unlike that of a startled rodent, would escape his beak.

It hadn't been a habit of her husband's that she had taken much note of before. Not before they'd been to Barcelona. Not before she'd read that newspaper article. Not before Irene Norton had dropped her heart on the stone floor of a Spanish villa and watched it shatter, like glass, the shards too small to ever rebuild it back into what it once was.

With stealth and care, Irene slipped from the warmth of her bed and fetched her dressing gown, pulling it around her shoulders as she tiptoed to her wardrobe. She opened the doors carefully, and in the darkness grappled at the clothes she recognized as her own. Her arms filled with shifts and dresses and trousers and braces and blouses and anything she could get off of hangars without a fuss, Irene rushed to the doorway of the room and slipped out.

( Adrastos, her ever loyal soul, followed her without question, landing impossibly quietly on a hallway table as he watched her struggle to close to the door of the room from which they had so desperately escaped. )
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Cut for length, spoilers for "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Final Problem" (Which was written 100+ years ago so do spoilers really apply?)
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Muse: Irene Adler
Canon: Sherlock Holmes: "A Scandal in Bohemia"
Verse: Open Canon
Word Count: 1215