Best One-Shot Grief & Mourning Fanfics
Grief & Mourning one-shots under 10k words — the trope distilled to a single complete read. Curated from AO3, ranked by kudos.
Top 14 One-Shot Grief & Mourning Fanfics
Ranked by AO3 kudos. Each fic is tagged with grief & mourning and falls in the short stories under 10,000 words range.
Make Me, Face Me, Look At Me
by DrainedOfDaylight150
Tom Riddle meant to drain the life out of Harry Potter when the boy first began to write to him. He soon discovered why he shouldn’t.Tom did not understand why the boy who had supposedly vanquished his older self was living in a cupboard, and why no one seemed to notice.Soon enough, confusion become
A Man of Good Fortune (ONE-SHOT)
by Elizabeth19Parker
After his death, Dream wakes in the waking world as a man. Cold, hungry, mortal, and without a kingdom that recognizes him, he goes to the only person who might understand what it means to live beyond all logic: Hob Gadling.
when i close my eyes
by jillybean414
"I try to sleep so you can come back to me in dreams. Maybe then I would remember you. But it's only nightmares now. That is, if I can even fall asleep." - Ilya Rozanov, Letter Four <3 or a very short series of letters Ilya writes to Shane if he never woke up from his accidentinspired by a whole jum
noun: grief (intense sorrow, especially caused by someone's death)
by Allegro
There had been no spectacle after Yoshimitsu’s death, no grand ascension to the nether world, just a quiet that filled the halls like the morning after a storm. Everything wet, still, the sun a bleary shine on the puddled snow.Raven had not, in recent memory, experienced grief.
this ruinous god I swear did not love
by itskindnessinfinite
She is so beautiful, Rose thinks. She is so beautiful and does not know it. “And look at this. Look at this grass. Look at this wild untamed beauty. Look at this, Pearl. I want to remember this forever. I want to remember you forever, as you are now, and as you will be.” Tears, organic, wet, sodium
Overcoming
by dave_178
Jisung doesn't talk to strangers. Ever. He doesn't talk much at all, really. Not since what happened with his parents.Minho doesn't care. After the loss of his girlfriend, he hasn't really cared about anything or anyone. Not even his closest friends, who keep asking him questions he can't answer.But
The Silent Diamond – The Courage to Choose
by NocturneWisteria
Crowned the “Silent Diamond” of the Season, Genevieve Ashbourne has turned her trauma and silence into the ton’s favourite spectacle. When Lord Trewellan uses her past in Bath to blackmail her family, Benedict Bridgerton—restless artist and unexpected ally—refuses to treat her as a prize to be won,
We're in for the long drive
by InsomnicaBat
"There are over a thousand streets in this city," I start, standing in front of the window, "You don't need to know the route. You give me a time and a place. I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes, and I'm yours, no matter what. Anything happens a minute on either si
i’ve given all i can, it’s not enough
by Anonymous
two days before vecna makes his final move, steve makes a choice that will change the party forever
A Quiet Birth
by Saezs
Alicent Hightower never thought she would be the queen. She always knew she would have children, but never in her daydreams had she realized those children would be princes and princesses. Nothing went as planned or as foretold.
In The End
by ArabellasWorld
i saw some spoilers and i had to write it. please read tags.
Steelslayer (Firefight)
by Koco_Coko
(PLEASE READ [Limelight (Steelheart)] AND [Mycelium (Mitosis)] FIRST! THIS IS THE SECOND ACT OF THREE.)------------- FORGIVE AND FORGET. RESENT AND REMEMBER. Delphie "DC" Charleston is now the Steelslayer, the teenage girl who killed Steelheart. An symbol, an icon... but she's still just Delphie beh
A thousand other words
by MDSpencer
In the wake of Beldaruit’s death, Qifrey wonders if he ever cared at all.
A Tab too Far
by Ash_is_Scattered
Red Hood has stepped back from his mission to kill Joker, sure it was his end goal, but he needed to regroup and assess, especially knowing Bruce wasn't going to kill for him. Jason has realised that his work controlling drugs in Gotham has done a lot of good, but the lingering thoughts of his late
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About Grief & Mourning
Stories that sit with loss: characters mourning a death canon rushed past, or grieving losses that aren't deaths at all — homes, futures, versions of themselves. Grief fic ranges from raw immediate aftermath to the strange long tail of missing someone for years.
Canon kills characters and moves on; fandom holds funerals. Readers return to grief fic because it treats mourning as a story worth telling rather than a scene to survive.
Common scenarios: A character finally crying at a grave two years too late, or the survivor of a duo learning to do alone all the small things they used to do together.
About This List
This list of 14one-shot Grief & Mourning fanfics spans 41,284 total words. Kudos range from 4 on the newest entries to 52 on the most established. Most entries are ongoing works, so subscribe on AO3 for update notifications. The most common rating is Mature (5 of 14 fics).
Recurring tags across this list: Grief · Grief/Mourning · Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence · Angst.
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