Archive of Our Own ^beta

She doesn't bother to learn their names now; Sybil of course knows them all, and Edith has her pets, but to Mary they remain 'the lieutenant in the third bed' or 'that captain with the ridiculous mustache'.

“His name is Captain Warren,” Edith snaps. “Honestly Mary, don't you care for anyone but yourself?”

“You must admit he does rather resemble a walrus.”

Edith doesn't laugh, but she does turn away in a huff, which was Mary's objective in any case.

At one point she had bothered; she'd cared a very great deal. But that was before; before she'd bargained and paid too high a price for it, before she had no more to give.

Major Wright

It's his hair she notices first, glinting in the sunlight streaming in the windows; a burnished gold, the kind that makes her catch her breath like a silly girl with her first crush, remembering afternoons spent walking the gardens, late dinners by candlelight, hushed and reverent for no particular reason.

Seen from the front, the Major's face is all planes and angles, with a neat little beard, and gradually she ceases to see anyone in him but himself, a decent man in his early thirties with a dry wit and a leg wound that ulcerated in the field, but seems to be healing properly at Downton.

“Clearly I've no manner of luck at all,” he says one day, after Dr Clarkson has made his rounds and declared the Major to be 'improving nicely'. “Not a light enough wound to remain with the fellows, but not grievous enough to send me home.”

“I don't know about that,” Mary says, liking him despite herself, despite all the times she's thought of how she must hold herself apart from these men, must keep herself contained, keep fear locked in her heart and not for a moment let it show. “After all, you've managed to catch my attention, and if you knew me better, you'd know that makes you very lucky indeed.”

He grins up at her from his bed, a bundle of boyish insouciance, and she gets the impression that he's only just enough of a gentleman not to wink. “Or perhaps you're the lucky one, Lady Mary, to have me gracing your lovely home.”

“It must be your luck to be here,” she says, as he bends his head and the light hits his hair just right, stealing her breath all over again, leaving her chilled. “I've given all mine away, I think.”

He's proclaimed well enough to be sent back to the front two weeks later; it's another two weeks beyond that before she remembers to stop expecting a gold glint among the crowds of men, before she can stop feeling they'll all take back with them every particle of fear she lets slip.

It's only another week before she hears the Major's luck has turned, and he's been returned to England for good, minus both his legs.

Lieutenant Greene

She overlooks him at first, as he's a quiet sort who doesn't demand attention; the kind of man she'd frankly think much more suited to Edith's style of conversation, or lack thereof.

It's Edith who starts it, really, handing Mary a copy of Ovid's Metamorphosis one day as she's rushing past on some other errand and asking her to drop it off.

“I'd do it, but I'm simply run off my feet,” Edith says, a stack of papers threatening to flutter right off the pile of books in her arms. “And I promised it to him yesterday. Do stay and chat with him a bit, he's a dear fellow once you get to know him.”

She's gone before Mary can so much as get up from her chair, much less inform Edith that she does not share her perplexing fascination with every strange man under their roof.

But the book catches her attention in spite of herself; it's always been one of her favorites, and the way the Lieutenant's eyes light up at the sight of the title is enough to make her ignore the slight tremor in his hands as he reaches for it.

He turns out to be something of a philosopher, and they share their favorite stories (hers is Daphne, his Icarus), ending up drawn into debate and interpretations, first among the hospital beds, then later out in the gardens, where he sits with his case of trench foot (“Not the most appealing of afflictions, I'm afraid”) propped up in the sun.

“You don't find Icarus foolish, that he ignored all warnings and common sense for something so utterly impractical?” she asks, tipping her face up to the light. At times she's so chilled through she feels she'll never be warm again, that even if she were as close to the sun as Icarus had flown, she would still have that frozen knot of helpless fear twisting her insides, prompting her to bargain with God, with any gods she thinks might help.

“I don't,” he answers, wincing as he shifts his foot. “Or rather, I don't blame him for wanting to touch the face of something so mighty. Isn't it worth the risk sometimes, to burn in order to have what we yearn for most?”

She ignores the flare in her heart (Dear God, if you'll keep him safe), pushes it down and wills it to burn out (I'll give him up), along with thoughts of Perseus and sea monsters and all the rest (I'll go to my own marriage and be good this once, only please...), swallows it all until her voice betrays not a tremor. “I'm not sure it is, not for me at least. I think I prefer to remain earthbound, and intact.”

“I might have guessed, with your love of Daphne,” he says. “If you want to talk of foolishness, let's examine her more closely – a woman pursued by a god, the brightest among the gods, even. Yet she turns down perfection, preferring to harden herself and remain alone for eternity.”

“You're just trying to bait me now,” Mary says, shaking her head at him. “Perhaps she loved another and couldn't bear the thought of Apollo's touch. Or perhaps she'd merely wanted to live her own life in peace all along, and that was her only means of accomplishing it.”

(Please, just let him live. That's all I ask.)

“Perhaps,” he says, squinting up at the sun, shading his eyes against the glare. “Sometimes we must change in order to get what we want, eh?”

Later, as she helps him back inside, lending him a shoulder to lean on, he thanks her, in his quiet, studious way.

“It's so refreshing to have someone to talk to like this. My old chums from school used to go for hours on literature and philosophy and all that sort of thing.” His face falls as she helps him back into bed, and she notices his hands have begun trembling once more. “There were six of us, back before the war. We'd all been together since we were boys. Now there's only me left. Three of them were killed by the same shell, right in front of-”

The trembling doesn't still when she takes his hand, no matter how tightly she grasps it, no matter how much she wishes she could hold him earthbound, to keep him from a landscape of thought too hellish for her to contemplate.

“I did it on purpose,” he says, his voice gone hoarse, and she leans closer to hear, close enough to see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “I got my feet good and wet, and let them stay that way long enough to get out of the trenches. I know it was wrong, but-”

“Hush,” she says firmly, desperate to calm the tremors in his voice, to escape the blank look in his eyes, the one she remembers frozen on Matthew's face whenever he's asked about the war. “That doesn't matter now. All that matters is that you get well.”

“And what if I do?” he asks, turning that blank look on her. “They'll just send me back. I can't go back. I won't.”

“Hush,” she says again, helplessly, groping for anything that might soothe him. “Things will look better in the morning, you'll see. We'll speak to the doctor; surely they won't send you back when you're not fit for it.”

After a moment, his breathing quiets, and there's even the ghost of a smile on his face when he looks up at her again. “It'll look better when the sun rises, is that it?”

“Yes, exactly,” she says, and forces a smile; even if she doesn't believe it, it's important that he does, important that both of them believe they have some control, even if it's only an illusion.

When she's woken by distant screaming in the night, muffled by the heavy, ancient stones of her home, she doesn't know it's him, doesn't know it until she comes up against his empty bed the next morning, on her way to speak with Dr Clarkson.

“The poor man snapped during the night,” Clarkson tells her when she finally manages to run him to ground. “It happens from time to time, when they can't take the stresses of the things they've seen and done. We had to sedate him, and thought it best if he be moved back to the hospital in the village for now.”

“What will happen to him?” she asks, feeling the chill in her heart spread, encasing it in ice.

“If he recovers, he'll be sent home as unsuitable for further service. If not, he'll likely be sent to an asylum for further care. Now, if you'll excuse me, Lady Mary...”

“Of course,” she murmurs, barely taking notice of his departure, wondering now if it is enough simply to live; if it is even possible to live through this unchanged, or if all her prayers might merely serve to return Matthew in body, leaving a part of himself forever trapped back in France. He had always been the better of them at changing; how much of a metamorphosis could she be required to undergo, in order to match him?

She closes her eyes on the thought, and never inquires as to the ending of Lieutenant Greene's story, preferring to maintain the illusion.

Captain Mayhew

He has the second-bluest pair of eyes she's ever seen, startling in their clarity and the way they seem to bore right through her. That alone would be enough to make her avoid him, and the fact that he's also charming and vivacious enough to gain the affection of seemingly everyone else in the household ensures she'll keep her distance.

“You don't like me very much, my lady,” he calls out one day as she's crossing the great hall, absorbed in a letter from Matthew she'd received that morning.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she says, taken aback to find him directly before her, the corners of those eyes of his crinkling as he grins. “Why should I dislike you?”

“I assure you, it's a complete mystery to me,” he says, falling into step beside her. “But I was wondering if I might ask for your advice.”

“My advice?” she says, meeting his gaze, hoping she appears calm and unruffled, under all her layers, ice built over fear upon hope. “Whatever for?”

“Well, you see, I've only ever met one other woman who didn't take an immediate fancy to me,” he says, and she can't resist an interruption.

“I can't imagine why that would be.”

He ignores her, as she knew he would, plunging glibly along. “And strange as it may seem, she is the one who has won my heart. I want to marry her,” he says, stopping dead in front of her. “How would you suggest I go about it, if it were you in her place?”

It's those damnable eyes of his, she decides later, that cause her to be utterly honest with him, as she wishes she could have been in the past.

“Tell her how you feel, and let her make her choice from there. That's all you can do, really. We ought not play games with other people's feelings.”

He doesn't joke, as she expects; in fact his face is surprisingly sober, as though he's actually listening to her, considering what she has to say.

“And for heaven's sake, don't delay. It isn't worth the risk, putting it off.”

“Oh, you needn't worry about that,” he says, cheeky grin making a reappearance. “They're sending me home next week, on account of my weakened heart.” This last statement he accompanies with a dramatic gesture, clutching at his chest and winking, and she rolls her eyes and turns away, not allowing herself to smile until after her back is turned, not allowing herself to think at all of the crumpled pages in her hands, of how she wishes she could heed her own advice.

The nurses find him dead in his room, two days before he was due to depart. Dr Clarkson talks of blood clots in the lungs, but she turns away, not allowing herself to cry, not for other people's lost hopes.

Captain Fox

Granny nearly catches her out over Captain Fox, bursting in one day while Edith was helping the man compose a letter, and Mary sat pretending to ponder her own blank sheet some feet away, pretending there was anything she could possibly say in between screaming and silence.

“Oh, there you are, my dear,” Granny says, looking a bit lost in her heavy silks against the backdrop of iron bed frames and soldiers in their pajamas. “Really, I don't know how you stand it here. One can hardly find a chair that doesn't look as though it's been occupied by a mangy dog.”

“Do take mine, Granny,” Mary says, rising from her seat. “I can assure you of its cleanliness, at least.”

“Your sister seems very pleased with herself these days.” There's a rustle of expensive fabric as her grandmother settles herself, her sharp eyes focused on Edith.

“You know Edith,” Mary says, pulling up a chair that does, admittedly, look somewhat the worse for wear. “She's never happier than when she has a captive audience. This has all put her quite in her element.”

“Yes. Still, we must all keep ourselves busy,” her grandmother says, turning back to Mary, the blank paper lying accusingly on the desk before them.

Mary smiles, refusing through long practice to be bullied, no matter how politely. The silence between them lies heavy for a moment, broken only by the low murmur of Captain Fox's voice as he dictates to Edith.

I know things can't be exactly as they were, and I wouldn't blame you for not wishing to marry a man in my condition. Even so, my feelings for you remain as they ever were-

Granny's voice cuts sharply into the quiet. “You are keeping yourself occupied, I hope? How is Sir Richard these days?”

“Very busy in London. He won't be able to come up until at least next month, I'm afraid,” Mary says, wrenching her mind back to the conversation at hand with some difficulty, back to the reality she has bargained herself into.

“Thank God for small favors,” Granny says, looking over Mary's clearly failed attempts at correspondence once more. “And Cousin Matthew, have you heard from him recently?”

“Not in a few weeks now,” Mary admits. “And his letters have been growing shorter when he does write. I suppose there's a good deal he can't say.”

“Yes,” her grandmother says, cocking her head in that way that's always reminded Mary of an inquisitive falcon, too perceptive by half. “I would imagine there is a very great deal he feels unable to say.” In the background, Captain Fox's voice continues steadily on, if somewhat heavier than before.

I hope that we might still be friends, at the least. We've meant too much to each other for that not to be the case.

“I must look in on your mother before I go.” Mary stands as her grandmother does, grateful to have been reprieved from the inquisition; she is too fragile still to withstand it for long, the icy hard layers of old fear always threatening to crack, the facade too easily breached these days. “She always has the most delightfully vicious things to say about Cousin Isobel. War has been the making of her.”

“At least it's done someone some good,” Mary says.

They've nearly made it through the doorway before Granny pauses, as though she's only just noticed Captain Fox's hushed voice behind them.

“Mary dear, why does that man's voice sound so familiar? I can't imagine we've met before.”

I love you still, my darling, and even if we are now never to be together, please remember that.

Mary breathes deep, and calls upon her dwindling reserves of strength to summon up a smile, even if it's unlikely to fool her grandmother. “He sounds quite like Cousin Matthew, I suppose.”

Some weeks later, she catches Edith sniffling into her handkerchief, clutching a letter in her hand.

“Oh, Mary. Captain Fox's fiancee has written to say she doesn't wish to marry him now that he's been blinded. How could she be so awful?”

Somehow, Mary is still surprised that any more pieces of her could die, that there are any left to grow numb and cold. “I don't know.” She should say something more here, she feels, something about not judging others and being kind, the sort of thing Sybil would say if she were here, but nothing comes to mind. “I'll read it to him, if you can't stand to.”

“You would?” Edith asks, looking suspicious under her reddened nose and eyes.

“It won't be the first time I've broken a man's heart,” Mary says, taking the page from her sister's hand and setting off to do her penance.

Captain Crawley

It is a very painful process, she finds, to regain feeling once more, to have all those pieces of herself that had dropped away brought back again bit by bit.

It begins when Sybil notices her good luck charm among Matthew's things. While she isn't really sorry for snapping at her sister, Mary wishes she could explain why she'd felt the need, why Sybil's natural lamenting of Matthew's injuries had felt like an accusation, a pointed reminder of everything Mary had failed at with him. If only she had done things differently; if only she'd had better luck to give him, chosen her bargains with more care.

But he's alive, some small part of her thinks, and so she blurts it out, and something of the ice around her heart cracks.

It happens again when he opens his eyes, bleary and bruised and unfocused, but still a good sign, still beautiful when they manage to focus on her.

Once she would have been surprised by the bitterness in his voice when he begins to speak, would have been broken by the confusion and tears thickening his words, so unlike her old Matthew, with his capable assurance. But it's different now, of course; if he's changed, so has she, enough to present him with a calm front of her own, and her hands soothing back the mussed, tarnished gold of his hair.

It's enough to answer his questions with the truth, to give him what he needs honestly and directly, without delay or prevarication.

It's even enough, in the end, that she begins to forget who her bargains have made her, the deals she's made, both ephemeral and concrete, to get them both to this point, alive and fairly whole, tangled together like ivy around the bole of a tree.

Enough just to push his chair through the grounds, to let it be just the two of them for a little while, with no specters haunting them; no hopes, perhaps, but no fears either, just the simple peace of the sunlight on her face, the earth beneath her feet, and Matthew somewhere in between.

It's his voice that prompts her from her reverie, brings her back to herself, as he's always been able to do. “Mary? I feel I may begin to grow roots if I sit here much longer.”

“And why shouldn't we? Roots, and bark, and leaves as well.” She almost laughs aloud, torn between the need to stay here, to stay in this moment with him forever, and the need to keep moving, to never stop running for fear it will all catch up with her, all her debts demanding payment.

“You've no need to run from me, Daphne,” he says. “After all, I'm hardly in any condition to catch you.”

“You remembered,” she says, coming around to face him, to see the whole of him, right there in front of her. Not unchanged, but still intact.

“Of course I remember your favorites,” he says, smiling. “Things haven't changed that much.”

“Very well,” she says, seating herself in the grass before him, betraying nothing by look or touch. “No roots, no bark, no leaves. Just us.”

And Dear God, let that be enough.