[fic] you & me of the 10,000 wars, downton abbey modern au, 11k words, 2/4

[allthingsholy]

Title: You & Me of the 10,000 Wars (A Downton Industries Fic)
Author: allthingsholy
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Words: 11k this chapter, 21k total
Rating: R
Notes: Equal parts modern adaptation and modern au. Thanks to juniperlane & lulabo for the betas; thanks to goodmenfall for the britpicking. Any errors or Americanisms that remain are entirely down to me. Sorry for the super huge delay between chapter 1 and chapter 2, but life things and family things and. Chapter 3 will be up when ... chapter 3 is up.[Also at AO3.] Chapter one found here.

Summary: Robert Crawley, president and CEO of Downton Industries, wants to make sure his family’s company lives on after he’s gone. Heir-apparent to the company is Matthew Crawley, industrial lawyer and Robert’s new-found right hand man. Less than thrilled with Robert’s decision? His eldest daughter, Mary. Expelled from Oxford and a constant tabloid presence, Mary’s rebellious streak constantly puts her at odds with her father. She very publicly butts heads with Matthew, much to the displeasure of her family. But Matthew quickly learns that there’s more to Mary than meets the eye, and Mary might’ve made a few misjudgments of her own.



Chapter Two: One & One Make One

It had taken thirty minutes to get Mary sewn into her gown; it takes twice as long to get her out of it. She has two glasses of champagne in quick succession while one of Evelyn’s assistants buzzes around her to undo the stitching at every necessary seam. When Anna finally make it backstage, Mary’s got one of her arms bent awkwardly over her head while Daisy picks at the thread along her side.

Anna’s got two more glasses of champagne in her hands and she holds one out to Mary. “One for me,” she says, “and one for you, Twiggy.”

Mary clinks glasses but doesn’t drink. Her fingers are already tingling so she sets the champagne down on the table and focuses on the feel of Daisy’s hands at her ribcage. Her stomach is still twisted into tight and anxious knots, the same as it’s been after every show she’s done so far. There’d been a moment halfway down the catwalk where she’d been sure she’d ruin everything, but she’d kept her eyes planted firmly on the back wall and managed not to trip over her ridiculous shoes. Daisy snips a bit too close to her skin and Mary winces while her eyes scan the crowd for her sister. “Where’s Sybil?”

“She was waiting for Gwen, they’ll just be a minute.” Anna leans against one of the make-up tables and says, “Evelyn must be thrilled. I heard everybody talking about how amazing the new collection is. Everyone loved the show.”

Mary smiles and feels the tight ball in her stomach ease a little bit. Evelyn’s designs have always been popular enough with a certain crowd to keep the financial side of things from ever being too big a problem, but she wants more for him than breaking even. She wants more for the both of them. She’s invested enough money into his lines to have her own interest in his success, and there’s a selfish kind of pride she gets from seeing everyone’s positive reactions.

Daisy finally sets down her scissors and says, “Alright, out you get.” Mary grabs the robe Anna holds out and just as she’s knotting the belt, Sybil rushes forward dragging Gwen at her heels. “You looked beautiful.” She presses a fervent kiss to Mary’s cheek. “Everyone looked beautiful, the whole collection was amazing.”

Sybil’s dolled herself up for the show, her hair slicked back and shining instead of piled into a mess atop her head. Gwen’s wearing a dress of Sybil’s, the skirt far shorter on her than it ever seems on Sybil. She tugs at the hem self-consciously and smiles around the anxiousness in her lips and says, “That was fantastic, Mary.” The north squeezes out in her vowels and Mary clasps a hand around her wrist in solidarity or understanding or something she doesn’t mean to be pity. Gwen’s fingers flick out to grab at Sybil’s hand but Sybil’s pushing back toward Anna, stepping ever so slightly away; the corners of Mary’s lips pull themselves into a frown. She makes a mental note to corner her youngest sister at a more opportune time, when they’re not surrounded by friends and acquaintances and several members of the press.

There’s an endless parade of people, all offering compliments and congratulations and Mary deals with each of them in turn. She may not bear the brunt of the Crawleys’ high society duties but she’s still her mother’s daughter and she learned her lessons well. She only rolls her eyes toward Anna and Sybil when she gets caught up in something especially long-winded: Judith Reynolds asking after Granny; Rachel Kingsley inviting her to a charity event next month; Melanie Tribett not so casually asking after Kemal’s whereabouts. She keeps her smile stuck wide and friendly, only letting the edges chill when herding Melanie toward her next available target.

Mary watches her weave toward Harris Stewart, oldest son of one of her father’s friends and next in line to take over his father’s massive manufacturing conglomerate. Anna leans in after Melanie’s carefully out of earshot and says, “She’s an eager one.”

Mary doesn’t say anything. For all the ways she dislikes Melanie and doesn’t even fake more than the most necessary civility, she’s all too aware of how easily it might’ve been her in the same shoes, the same situation--chasing after the oldest sons of her parents’ oldest friends. It sets her teeth on edge more than a little and she turns toward Sybil rather more aggressively than she needs to. “What are your plans for tonight?” Melanie has her hand worked into the crook of Harris Stewart’s arm and Mary turns away and drains her glass in one.

If her sister notices the sudden tension that Mary can feel radiating off her skin in waves, she doesn’t say. Sybil fiddles with one of the necklaces at her throat and glances up at Anna from the corner of her eye. “Meeting Branson, probably. What do you think, Gwen?” In all the time Mary’s known her, she’s never seen Gwen refuse her sister anything; for all Mary loves Sybil, she wants to reach over and shake her for the way Gwen’s throat works before she answers.

“Of course,” Gwen says. She keeps her eyes set exactly on the toes of her high heels. “I’ll give him a call right now, actually.” Gwen excuses herself and weaves out through the crowd. Mary can’t help but watch Sybil watch Gwen, the way her sister’s eyes trail after the mess of red curls all the way across the room.

Mary leans toward her sister and flattens her voice into as neutral a tone as she can manage. “Careful there.”

Sybil doesn’t answer, just runs the charm of her necklace back and forth against her throat. When she was younger, Mary would find her with her hands dug into their mother’s jewellery box or their father’s desk drawer or a tin of biscuits in the kitchen. Sybil’s never been one to stay idle and it pours out from the ends of her in mad bursts sometimes; Mary suddenly can’t remember the last time she saw her sister dance.

Sybil’s fingers finally still when Gwen comes back in and slides up against Sybil’s shoulder. It makes Mary want to smile; it makes Mary want to cry. She waves over a waiter and passes them all champagne instead, and spends the next chunk of the night passing on all the fashion gossip she can think of.

Backstage after an event turns into its own little party more often than not, with Evelyn entertaining investors and reporters and finding time to flirt with every available blonde. Mary watches him out of the corner of her eye and when he finally slides an arm loosely around her waist and presses a kiss to her hairline, she tucks herself comfortably against him and says, “Need help handling anyone?”

Evelyn tips back his glass--his third or likely fourth, judging by the gleam in his eyes and the red tint swelling up toward his cheekbones--and digs his fingers into her hip. “If Melanie Tribett tries to corner me one more time--”

“She’s not with Joseph Parker anymore, you know. I’d thought her mother never would’ve let his money slip through her fingers.”

Evelyn reaches for another glass of champagne. “Was she asking after Kemal?”

“Of course.”

Evelyn plays with the end of Mary’s belt, twisting it around and through his fingers, and she can tell just by looking at him how badly he needs a cigarette. She makes to pull him toward the rear door when she’s stopped up short, her heart suddenly somewhere between her mouth and shoulders.

She hears Kemal’s laugh before she sees him, high and boundless and ringing out over the crowd. It hits her straight in the chest. She grips the glass in her hand almost hard enough to break it and when she finally finds him in the flurry of people he’s got a girl in his arms and one trailing behind and there are arms and hands everywhere. He’s browned and beautiful and the burn that settles into Mary’s ribs is equal parts lust and something too rough to be weariness. Anna slides a hand around her wrist but Mary doesn’t look away from Kemal’s curls brushing down against his forehead and the endless smile that lines his eyes. He sets down the blonde and comes rushing toward her and she’s up into his arms before she has any time to react.

“Mary,” he breathes into her neck. His palms slide around her waist and up against the plane of her back. She fists a hand in his jacket and goes rigid against him, soft only in the bend of her neck toward his lips. Some habits, she thinks, as her fingers slide up to his collar. He smells like leather and Kemal and, inexplicably, the sea, and when he sets her down and presses his lips to hers--greedy, always, as he nips at her lower lip and licks into her mouth--she tastes salt and the expensive Turkish cigarettes he smokes. He marks a trail of kisses from her mouth to her collarbone, making enough of a scene that people are starting to stare. There’s a backstage photographer snapping pictures from the corner.

This thing with Kemal--it comes in waves, she has found. She has known him for nearly five years and her life takes no different shape when it is wrapped around his. It’s not that she’s unbending or that he’s an especially accommodating person, but she has found that she’s as happy to let him go as she is to welcome him back and he’s not one to stand still for long. Kemal is here or not, and she loves him or not, with equal and opposite force. It’s not something her parents understand and not something she’s wont to explain to them. His kisses still taste like rebellion; his hands pressed against her hips feel like their own kind of freedom.

“Mary,” he says again, hot air puffing out against her skin. His hands circle her waist and there’s a tug of something tired behind her ribcage. “I’ve missed you.” He buries his nose in her hair, and even as she doubts the truthfulness of his words, she’s pulling him closer. Over his shoulder, Anna and Sybil exchange a look and Evelyn clears his throat. “Let’s get out of here,” Kemal whispers against her cheek. Mary imagines if she pressed her ear to his chest, she might just hear the ocean. “Right now. Let’s go.”

He kisses her once, twice, and steals the no from her lips.

--

Matthew cleans his office twice, reorders the papers on his desk, tidies the books on his coffee table and fluffs the cushions half to death. He undoes it all five minutes later. Papers and folders are scattered to look casually disheveled, like he’s been hard at work all day doing anything other than driving himself to distraction waiting for Mary to come barging through the door at half twelve. Matthew stops halfway through spreading a contract out on the coffee table and runs a hand through his hair. He sighs. The papers go back into their folder. He fluffs the cushions.

Sybil comes at noon like she always does, bags of take-away in her hands and the scent of garlic wafting out from the spread she sets up on his coffee table. He wraps up a phone call from Berlin just as she starts taking plastic lids off containers.

She passes him a plate of shawarma. “I didn’t know you spoke German.”

The food in his hands smells amazing and breakfast feels like a very long time ago; it only ever consists of too-strong coffee and whatever Molesley leaves at the top of the pile of the most urgent contracts. It’s occurred to him that maybe he should take better care of himself, and that maybe Sybil beat him to this conclusion by a mile. Matthew settles down on the couch and leans back against the perfect cushions and tucks into his food. He smiles around the first bite, hot and spicy and delicious. “I’m a man of many mysteries.”

Sybil picks at the tines of her plastic fork, lip quirking up into a grin. “That seems unlikely.”

“Caught. I am exactly as boring as you’d think.”

“Now, now,” Sybil says. “Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you could exceed everyone’s expectations and be twice as boring as people think.” She knocks her elbow against his and smiles. Matthew chuckles to himself and heaps more rice onto his plate.

In the six weeks since Mary’s been coming to their meetings, she’s shown up on time exactly never. Sybil still comes at noon with lunch, just like she did before, and when she hands him his food--usually something exotic, strange spices and names he can’t pronounce (Sybil’s bound and determined to expand every horizon she meets, apparently)--her smile is usually half an apology.

Matthew’s been at Downton almost a year, but he’s not met anyone he likes quite so well as Sybil. Sometimes the wait for Mary lasts ten minutes; sometimes it’s closer to an hour. In the meantime, Sybil tells him stories of University, horrible exams and boring professors and the ridiculous behaviour of her peers. Matthew tells her stories of his own--Michael Davies being chucked from the girls’ dormitory with nothing but a scarf and his very recently ex-girlfriend’s umbrella; Stan Wilson’s getting caught out with an illicit substance or two by the head of their halls. He stays quiet about the very goriest of details but he doesn’t doubt Sybil’s ability to keep his confidences. He’s never had any siblings and has few female relatives to speak of, but he imagines those relationships would be much like this one: good-natured ribbing, friendly banter and easy companionship. Sometimes he doesn’t mind waiting for Mary at all.

It had taken him longer than he’d like to admit to notice that Sybil’s stories, though entertaining in the extreme--sometimes she puts on voices; there’s a history professor she mimics that Matthew considers a personal favorite--are very rarely personal in nature. She mentions Gwen and Branson in passing, enough for Matthew to know that they’re important, and the rest of her family not at all. When he’d noticed the detached bent of her stories, he’d also noticed other details: strange tension in her hands when she talked about Gwen, an unconscious quirk to her mouth when she mentioned Branson. It makes Matthew wonder at the parts of Sybil’s life that he doesn’t get to see and at how much effort goes into carefully constructing the parts that he does. He’s seen Mary’s face splashed about the papers and he wonders how much Sybil’s guardedness has to do with Mary’s overexposure. He wishes he could ask, that he was sure enough of their friendship to offer a friendly shoulder or whatever support he could, but there are still pitfalls at Downton that he’s learning little by little, and he fears this might still be one he’s best off not falling into.

As little as he’s heard of Sybil’s most guarded relationships, he’s heard even less of Sybil’s relationship with Mary. After the second, third, fourth time Mary had shown up late, he’d asked Sybil if they ought to reschedule for later in the day; she’d just shrugged. “That won’t help,” she’d said, and her eyes had been pitying and resigned. Mary may still consider him green behind the ears but he knows a power play when he finds himself inadvertently caught in the middle of one.

Their first meeting he’d made the mistake of ignoring any potential awkwardness and carrying on like usual. Mary’d put an end to that with a few pointed remarks about the mail room and an unnaturally fast climb to the top. Sybil, for all Matthew’s sure of her friendship, hadn’t been much in the way of help. He tells himself not to pry at split loyalties and does his best not to hold it against her.

He’d had a fleeting moment of hope in their third meeting when Mary had expressed a genuine interest in one of the deals he was working on, but when he’d started to explain about mergers and acquisitions and straight payment versus stock options, she’d rolled her eyes and stepped out for a cigarette. To call it the high point of their interactions is as true as it is discouraging. Six weeks and he’s no closer to figuring out Mary Crawley than he was the day they met.

He’s done his best to keep his frustration in check when Robert asks--which he rarely does, though Matthew very much doubts that’s down to a lack of interest. He keeps trying to reconcile the Robert he knows with the Robert Mary sees, but they seem two different men entirely. When Mary speaks of her father--which is a rare enough occurrence that it’s not hard for Matthew to recall every instance--it’s haltingly, detached, like something sharp is set behind her teeth. It’s not quite the same look that Robert gets when he asks about her, but it’s close enough that Matthew can’t help but see the similarities.

He tries not to spend the entirety of his meetings with Mary wondering at the history of the Crawley family, but he must be doing a far worse job with Sybil because she stops him halfway through a story about Uni and breaks her usual silence and says, “She’s not so bad, you know.”

Matthew pauses halfway through a mouthful of rice and says, more curtly than he means to, “No?”

The smile Sybil gives him is sympathetic. Matthew can’t help but wonder whether it’s nature or necessity, the way that Sybil’s always playing perfect daughter and helpful mediator. “It’s complicated,” she says. She keeps her eyes on her food and pushes bits of rice around with her fork. “It’s always been complicated and now that Kemal’s back Mary’s sure to be even more, well.”

He watches the way Sybil’s hands tense and the sudden lines at the corners of her eyes and feels unbearably guilty. He’d seen photos of Mary and Kemal from a fashion show a week or two before, Sybil just peeking out in the background. The totality of what he doesn’t understand about her life--about Mary’s life--is huge. He tries to keep his voice lighter when he repeats after her. “It’s complicated.” For the millionth time he wants to ask why, how; he wants to ask what happened between Mary and Robert to create so wide a gulf between them and he wants to ask about Kemal’s role in everything. He doesn’t ask--he would never ask--but he wonders at the closed-off expression on Sybil’s face in those photos, watching Mary bundled up in Kemal’s arms.

He finally pulls himself from his thoughts and makes to tell Sybil about one of the programmes they’d funded last month, but he’s interrupted by Mary breezing in through the door, all offhand apologies and insincere smiles. The looks Mary gives him while they clear their lunch away fall somewhere between disinterested and icy. Matthew pretends not to notice and offers her tea instead.

It takes the better part of an hour to decide on three new charities. Mary offers reasons against all of Matthew’s choices. Matthew makes a token contribution but generally defers to Sybil, much as he always does. By the time they’re nearly finished, Sybil’s mobile buzzes and she steps into the hall while she tucks the phone against her cheek.

Matthew is suddenly very aware of the fact that it’s the first time he’s been alone with Mary since the first night they met. He corrects himself immediately--alone is not in a room with 300 other people, but when she’d slid her hand up the front of his jacket, those 300 other people hadn’t been on his mind at all. He meets Mary’s eyes across the coffee table and can’t help but remember her voice in his ear. He’s fairly certain that’s not what she’s thinking about as he clears his throat to fill the silence.

“So that’ll be Branson then?” His voice is too loud; he fights off a wince and soldiers on. “She’s not said but that’s his name, isn’t it? Her young man, as your grandmother would say?” He doesn’t know what makes him keep talking, what has him feeling like the burden to make amends is his. Whatever it is, it’s probably the reason he’s not called off this farce of a charity committee in the first place. He can’t help feeling as if he owes Mary something, no matter how hostile or terse her responses.

Mary doesn’t do much more than narrow her eyes but he’s already sure he’s said something wrong. She doesn’t raise her voice when she speaks and her tone isn’t exactly unkind, but he feels chastised nonetheless. “Whatever Sybil’s relationship with Branson, I think that’s Sybil’s business.” She pointedly picks up her cup of tea and says over the brim, “There’s rather enough prying into the love lives of the Crawley sisters as it is, don’t you think?”

“And how is Mr. Pamuk?” It’s out of his mouth before he even thinks it, hanging thick and heavy in the air between them. Mary’s features go slack. She sets her cup back in its saucer, sets her saucer on the table, and all with so much controlled hostility that Matthew’s half torn between feeling ashamed of his outburst and in awe of how aristocratic Mary’s upbringing must have been. It makes him sad and unbelievably tired and just as he opens his mouth to apologize, Sybil steps back into the room.

“So sorry, Gwen had a question about a report.” The cheer in her voice dies as she looks between Mary and Matthew. He doesn’t know how he looks, but Mary’s got her shoulders back and chin tipped up to the point of fury.

She grabs her bag and stands in one smooth motion. “If everything’s settled for today, I’ve other plans,” she says. “See you both next week.”

Sybil gives him a questioning look and Matthew’s off the sofa and across the room. “I didn’t mean to--I said--” He leaves Sybil with half-sputtered explanations and heads off after Mary to apologize, certainly, and explain himself if he can. Every explanation running roughshod through his head as he makes his way past Molesley’s desk and out toward the lifts seems wholly inadequate.

He spots Mary not at the lifts but heading toward Mr. Carson’s office. A dozen heads turn toward him when he calls out her name; when Mary stops she runs smack into a man with his hands full of files. Paper floats down toward the floor, underneath desks and chairs and Mary’s mouth opens into an O of surprise, the young man’s one of rather more panic.

Matthew jogs toward them to help and reaches them just in time to see Mary drop down toward the bulk of the pile. “I’m so sorry,” she says as she shuffles files and reaches for folders.

The young man--William, Matthew half recalls, a very junior associate in Carson’s department--drops to his knees beside her and gathers up whatever papers he can reach. “Not at all, it was my fault.” His face is blushing red to the roots of his blond hair.

Mary gives him a reassuring smile. “Don’t be silly, I stopped right in your way.” They finish gathering the papers from the floor; Matthew stands dumbly, reaching for the few sheets atop the nearest desk and thrusting them out toward William as they both climb back to their feet.

“Here you are, William.” He tries to look anything other than surprised or completely idiotic, but he’s certain he fails spectacularly. William takes the papers with a muttered “Thank you, Mr. Crawley” and a last look toward Mary. The smile she gives him can only describe as genuinely warm. It sits so naturally on her usually sharp features that Matthew forgets himself. He’s staring. He knows he’s staring and he can’t look away. It takes too long for Matthew to find his voice, time enough for Mary’s features to cool considerably, but what he might’ve found cold before is now just guarded. “I’m sorry,” he says, “for before. That was out of line.”

Her smile is diamond sharp and brittle and it stretches across her face in stages, mocking and furious and tired in turns. He wonders if he will ever stop cutting himself on her edges. She draws her shoulders back and narrows her eyes and it seems more and more unlikely all the time.

“Maybe a touch less garlic for lunch next week, hmm?” She spins on her heel and continues across the room, presses a kiss to Mr. Carson’s cheek and disappears into his office.

Matthew’s left standing in the middle of the office and he wonders, certainly not for the first time, if there’s more of her to be had when she’s not in this building, whether the edges of her fan out into something more gentle and less severe. He wonders what she looks like then, whether the lines of her mouth smooth into something gentler, what the muscles in her shoulders feel like when she doesn’t have her hackles raised. He can’t help but wonder--quite suddenly and mostly unbidden--what her hair looks like draped over her pillow in the middle of the night, or what her voice sounds like at the end of a lazy Sunday afternoon.

He wonders what the parts of her that she keeps so closely guarded look like, and whether she shows them to anyone at all.

--

For all that Mary’s worked to remove herself from the social circles her family still travels in, there are some things she cannot escape. Weekly tea with her mother and grandmother is something she’s never been able to get out of, and now that she’s got half a foot back in Downton, they’re half as likely to let her off the hook.

“I saw Melanie Tribbett at the Shaw opening last week.” Cora stirs her tea primly. Cora does everything primly, and Mary straightens her back in response and sighs.

“She was at Evelyn’s show. Delightful as always.” She doesn’t tell them about Miranda chasing after every wealthy man in attendance. It feels--unkind, which isn’t something Mary would usually care about when it comes to the socialite families she grew up with, but she holds her tongue nonetheless. “Where’s Sybil? I thought she was coming.”

Cora waves at someone past Mary’s shoulder. No matter where her mother picks for tea, there are always half a dozen people Cora knows, all sitting in their prim and proper outfits eating finger sandwiches and gossiping mercilessly. Mary’s been the subject of enough pointed looks to last a lifetime. “Sybil had schoolwork, I think. You know how she is about her studies. She told me about the show though, she said it was lovely. She showed me the pictures online.” Cora reaches over and squeezes Mary’s wrist; Mary most likely imagines a snigger from the table behind theirs, but she’s never quite sure. “You looked beautiful, darling.”

Mary smiles and tells them all about Evelyn’s autumn line: prints and pastels, new cuts and styles. She tries to fill as much time as she can before the inevitable happens.

“And how are your meetings going?” Cora stares into the bottom of her teacup and tries to look only casually interested. Mary can tell from her mother’s hands--white-knuckled even around bone china--that if she could, Cora would open up Mary’s throat and pull every word out by force. She’s tried before; Mary’s made her, stayed silent through pride and stubbornness until Cora couldn’t take it anymore. Mary finds a tiny bit of truth that costs her nothing and offers it up open-handed.

“It’s nice to spend the time with Sybil,” she says, stirring milk into her tea. She can see Cora’s lips form the questions--have you seen your father? have you spoken at all?--but she bites down on them at the last minute and stays quiet instead.

Truth be told, Mary hasn’t even seen her father since she came back to Downton, which has come as its own kind of terrible relief.

She’d shown up far too early for her first meeting with Matthew. When the taxi had dropped her off at the doors, she’d taken one look at the lines of the tower and walked straight in the other direction and gone to a cafe to wait. She smoked one cigarette on the way there and then another while she stood outside with rapidly cooling milky tea clutched in her hands. No sense in being early, in appearing too eager or ambitious or--whatever reasons she had for worming her way into these meeting had little enough to do with actually wanting to accomplish anything. She finally walked into the building ten minutes late, and anyone who looked at her wouldn’t have known she spent the trip to Matthew’s office trying not to catalogue all the changes in the place since she’d last been inside. She purposely didn’t notice new furniture or redesigned office spaces, and she certainly didn’t dwell on all the places she’d played as a child.

When she remembers Downton, it is always in half-light, red and rich and familiar even at the blurring edges. There are corners of that building she’s spent more time in than whole sections of her parents’ home, and she’d know them even now by smell or by touch. If she closes her eyes, she can feel the groove of the moulding underneath Carson’s desk, would know the sound of the drawers on their tracks anywhere. For as long as she can remember there has been a box of sweets tucked into the back of one of Carson’s desk drawers, chocolate in foil wrappers that used to crinkle in her small hands. He would pull her onto his lap, let her sign blank carbons and draw up contracts for ridiculous, extravagant things. One time, she remembers, he might’ve sold her the sky. If she left fingerprints on his paperwork, a chocolate thumbprint on a client file, he never scolded her or sent her back to her nanny, not until her head dropped down onto his shoulder and she dragged along behind him down the corridors to her father’s office.

She remembers hiding behind someone’s knees to escape from Mrs. Hughes, who’d never quite taken to her as Carson had. She remembers books spread out on the floor of her grandfather’s office and Sybil’s hands tugging at the ends of her hair. She even has a memory, half-formed, of falling asleep in her father’s lap while he reviewed reports, of being sat behind his great big desk while he mumbled budget items into her hair. She’s wondered in the years since if it might not be a false memory, something she constructed out of bits of air and wishful thinking, but it sits in her chest with a weight that feels real either way.

They’d grown up there, Mary and Sybil and Edith all run ragged through the offices and down the corridors. Every time she walks into Matthew’s office she remembers its old occupant Mr. Shandling and his twisted hands gripping the end of his cane while he scolded them not to run, to keep their voices down. “People are working,” he’d say, his mouth a sour pinch and Edith’s laughter trailing off behind them. There is a memory for every step she takes inside that building, and she’d rather die than share a single one with Matthew Crawley.

Mary doesn’t tell her mother any of it though; how her memories have bubbled up at random, thoughts of Edith and Carson and Mrs. Hughes and Granny all jumbled together with Matthew and charity files. It still feels very much like trespassing, coming back to a place that has moved on without her. She tries not to look for one, but there’s no place for her at Downton that she can find.

Cora is talking about someone Mary went to school with, the son of a friend of a cousin of the family, something long and convoluted that Mary doesn’t care about, and Mary presses her hands against the planes of her thighs and feels like this should all hurt less than it does. After all this time, it should hurt less, or differently at least, but sometimes it still feels as harsh as it did the first week she left, the first month, the first year. It’s been five years since she gave up any hope of running the company and Mary stills knows Downton’s stock value on any given day. If anyone asked, she’d deny it. No one asks. Cora keeps on with her story and Mary crosses her ankles underneath her chair.

Mary’s phone chirps once, twice, and she thumbs through messages from Kemal, hot and teasing enough that she forgets about Downton for awhile and doesn’t notice any glances that linger on their table longer than they ought. Kemal has always served as the most useful of distractions; Mary shifts in her seat and crosses and recrosses her legs and studiously does not meet her grandmother’s eyes.

Violet clucks her tongue disapprovingly every time Mary reaches for her phone. “In my day,” she starts--Mary would swear that those three words start off 90% of Violet’s conversations--“if a man wanted to take your call, he’d wait by the telephone.”

Mary smirks. “I thought only lovelorn girls waited for the phone to ring. You never did?”

Violet looks down her nose but there’s hint of amusement at the corners of her eyes. “We’re Crawleys, dear. We don’t do lovelorn.”

“So they should pine for us?” It’s an appealing enough image for Mary, if rather too romantic for her usual tastes.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Violet asks. “You’re still a lovely and respectable women, despite all that business in the past. He’d do well to woo you, dear.”

Mary forgets as often as not that Granny was her staunchest supporter, all that ferociousness tucked carefully into Mary’s corner in the most practical of ways. When she does remember, it’s in fragments and bits: coming home from those months abroad, her skin rather shockingly tanned, and driving past her parents’ flat and straight on to Granny’s instead; newspapers kept out of the house when her name appeared in the headline; Violet daring anyone to speak ill of her family with nothing more than a look and a well practiced smile. It’s a skill Mary’s not yet mastered, but she knows she’s been learning from the best.

Mama’s face shifts into the same coy, needling look Mary’s seen for as long as she can remember. “Your grandmother is no stranger to wooing, Mary.”

Violet shifts in her chair pointedly enough that even Mary hears the warning in it and says, “Mona Watson has been gossiping again, has she?” Violet leans in toward Mary conspiratorially and Mary can just see the edges of a much younger woman behind her grandmother’s lined face. Mary used to scour the albums in her parent’s library and flip through page after page of photographs of her grandmother. She doesn’t think of it often but she remembers it now, when Violet’s eyes are bright and sharp; how beautiful she was when she was younger. No stranger to wooing, indeed. “Crawley women have a weakness for dark-eyed lovers, child, and there’s no sense denying it.” She lifts Mary’s chin with a knobby finger. “But best be careful with that heart of yours.”

Mary sips her tea and smiles and wonders what lives in the place where her heart should be.

--

In the eight months since he was promoted at Downton, Matthew can remember taking a night to himself exactly twice. When he leaves the office at eight, the night guard gives him a curious look--he’s walked out at midnight every evening for the past six months. His heels echo around the lobby and the sound rattles around in his head for miles.

There’s a club he walks past on his way home and every night loud music spills out onto the pavement and puddles at the feet of all the sharp-dressed people bent around their cigarettes at the kerb. He’s never been one for the scene, for bright lights and ridiculous drinks--he’d rather a pint over a martini any day of the week--but his feet walk themselves in and seat him at the bar before he lets himself catalogue all the reasons he’d rather just go home.

The lights inside are pink and paint everyone in a blush that settles high on their cheekbones. The color makes the lines of the world run together. The music is loud and pounding; the bass settles deep in his chest, shifts around inside his ribcage and stays. By his second drink, he feels lighter. By his third, there’s a blonde at the end of the bar who keeps catching his eye.

He’s always appreciated the razor sharp distinction between being lonely and being alone. He’s always valued privacy, put stock in the restorative power of solitude, but tonight the distinction is hazy at best and seems altogether useless. The blonde has hair that falls over her shoulder and halfway down her back, and Matthew can’t stop staring at her wrists and wondering what she’d look like with the flimsy straps of her dress pooling down around her elbows. He orders them both another drink.

Her name is Hayley and she’s got a warm, red mouth and a voice that pushes up against the heavy bass in his chest and hums. He feels it all the way from his teeth to his toes. The pads of her fingers are soft when she rests them on the back of his hand, his wrist, the skin of his forearm, and she laughs like she’s got a secret she’d love to tell the world.

He lets himself unwind by small degrees, the edges he keeps close radiating outward with every drink and laugh and casual touch. Hayley leans closer, the better to be heard over the music, and her breath is warm on his cheek.

It’s not often that he does this. It’s not often that he has the time. He’s never been particularly good at it anyway, but Hayley’s smile is wide and she’s warm where her knee is pressed against his beneath the bar. They talk about sport and work and politics through two, three more drinks, until they’re tipped towards each other on their stools and light touches that were comfortable have shaded toward lingering and he can’t stop staring at her mouth. He keeps thinking about Sally May who’d sat in front of him for English in sixth form, about how she’d talked like an adult and had bright blue eyes that made him feel restless as he thumbed through Chaucer and Milton, not listening to anything their teacher said. Sally had always been first with an answer or a quote or a definition and he’d stared at the back of her neck for months, at the long blonde plait swept over one shoulder. He hasn’t seen her for fifteen years, hasn’t thought about her for almost as long and doesn’t know why he’s thinking about her now, but when Haley shifts toward him and smiles into her shoulder, he thinks maybe Sally grew up to look like this, miles of smooth skin that make his palms itch.

Matthew doesn’t know if it’s a new finely tuned radar or Mary’s ability to enter a room and take it over immediately, but he sees her the second she steps through the door. She’s backlit, the edges of her vague and indistinct, and she leans back against the hand that comes out of the shadows to settle in between her shoulder blades. The corners of Matthew’s mind that’ve spent the past hour smoothing out into a whisky haze come slipping back together, but nothing lines up quite right and his tongue is too thick in his mouth. Hayley’s talking about the cinema or the news or something else entirely, and Matthew’s tracking Mary in the mirror above the bar and trying to blink back the fog in his head.

“Matthew?” Hayley’s hand has been settled at his knee for the better part of ten minutes and the press of her nails against the fabric of his trousers jerks his eyes down to hers.

Matthew clears his throat and flicks his gaze up to the mirror above the bar; Mary and her small group have settled themselves along a booth in the corner. Best Matthew can tell, she hasn’t seen him yet, and he smiles quickly into the rim of his glass. “Sorry. Colleague of mine just came in.”

Hayley nods, loose curls brushing against her shoulders. Matthew keeps his eyes on the honey golden sheen of her hair. It’s almost enough to hold his focus but then he sees Mary’s reflection crossing the floor toward them. The muscles in his back knot themselves together all at once.

Mary slides in beside him and smiles an awful smile. “Matthew,” she says. She doesn’t raise her voice to compete with the music still blaring from the speakers at each end of the bar but he hears her just fine anyway. She’s wearing silver, something loose and billowy that falls to her forearms and down against her thighs. It makes her eyes look wide and bottomless.

Matthew swallows the anxiety creeping into the back of his throat and says, “Mary, hello.” His mouth won’t quite do what he wants it to, the words coming out thick and syrupy. Mary smirks at him, signals the bartender for a drink. Matthew checks the mirror for the rest of her party, still sat at the booth in the corner. One man--Kemal, presumably, though Matthew will deny recognizing him from any tabloid photographs--has his gaze fixed on Mary all the way across the club.

Matthew shuts his eyes and breathes in and out. He doesn’t believe in fate or karma but this seems especially unfair of the universe, to throw Mary Crawley at him when he can’t quite focus on--well, anything. Hayley’s still next to him, fingers drumming on the bar top. His knee feels cold. He hadn’t noticed her pull away.

“I’ve never seen you here before.” Mary’s voice brings him back to himself. When she tips up the end of her glass, her throat is long and pale, all exposed with her hair pulled up like that, and Matthew is staring and staring, eyes fixed on a freckle just under her jaw.

Beside him, Hayley stands suddenly, her arms tucked against her frame and her hands still and so far away. “I have to, excuse me,” she says, and Matthew watches her as she weaves in and out of the crowd, her skin changing colors in the light.

When he turns back to Mary, she’s got the corner of her mouth crooked up at him. “Last time I saw you with a date, it was your mother. The blonde seemed an improvement.”

Matthew snorts into his glass. He doesn’t imagine for a second that he looks anything close to dignified, with his suit jacket slung over the back of his chair and his tie hanging loose around his throat. It’s been a long day. It’s been a series of long days, truth be told, and Matthew’s sure the wear has started to show. Mary, however, manages to look glamorous and poised and put-together, even with two mostly drunk men pressing as much of themselves as possible up against each other just over her left shoulder. Three months of meetings and he’s never seen her with anything less than a rigid spine. He’s never even seen her with her hair down.

“I’ve never seen you with your hair down,” he says. The part of his brain that usually filters those things out before they reach his mouth seems to have stopped working.

Mary doesn’t answer or even acknowledge that he’s said anything at all. “If it’s blondes you’re after, I’m sure Edith would be more than happy to take you under her wing.” She pauses for the space of a breath, and if he knew her better he’d know whether it was scorn or envy that colored her words when she says, “It’d delight Papa, I’m sure.”

“Would it now?” Matthew runs his finger through the condensation on his glass. In the mirror over the bar, he sees Hayley at a table full of women, paying him no attention at all.

Mary draws her lips into something that would, on anyone else, be called a smile. “I’m sure he’d love nothing more than to wrap all of Downton up in a neat little package. It’d make him quite happy. You should think it over.”

“I didn’t know you had any interest in making your father happy.”

He doesn’t meant it as a barb, but she bristles anyway. It happens so quickly it might as well be a trick of the light--blue now and seeping into the metallic sheen of her dress. She pulls herself together with nothing more than a breath and a motion to the bartender.“You can ask, you know. If you want to.”

Matthew’s known for two months that he’s been doing a poor job of hiding his interest in the Crawley’s family drama--Sybil’s made him aware enough of that--but it’s still embarrassing to have Mary point it out so bluntly. If you want to. Matthew catches the bartender’s eye and motions for another drink. “I don’t want to.”

“Yes, you do.”

The bartender sets a glass in front of him, brown liquor, ice, and bad ideas all swirling together on the bar. Matthew watches him, his eyes passing over Mary and lingering on the most obvious parts of her. Something bright flares up in his chest. “Edith says you were expelled.”

Mary breathes out a laugh, her sharpest corners tucked away, even if only for a moment. “Edith says an awful lot of things. Few of them are worth listening to. So maybe not the best choice for you after all.” Her mobile buzzes against the bar; she flicks her eyes into the mirror and toward the back of the club. He tries not to follow her gaze to the booth in the corner but he can’t help it.

“Mr. Pamuk, I presume?” Mary makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “And he’s the reason you were expelled?”

She shrugs up one shoulder, then the other. “Kemal isn’t a reason for anything, he’s just--Kemal.” She gestures toward the booth in the corner. “That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”

“I, really Mary, I don’t want to pry.” His voice is embarrassingly small when he says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”

For just a second, Mary’s face goes soft and open, the lines of her smoothed out. Matthew can’t keep his hands still and he can’t meet her eyes, because he’s spent the better part of two weeks thinking about what she looks like when nobody’s around, whether the glint in her eye is all for show or something natural; he’s spent it thinking about what the ridges in her spine would feel like under his thumb, what she looks like when she’s laughing so hard she can’t catch her breath. Wondering if he could ever make her laugh so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. He wants a cold shower and a cigarette and another drink. Her elbow slides against his when she moves and it’s enough to make the bottom of his stomach drop out.

There are whole parts of Matthew’s brain that seem to have stopped working entirely. At least he’s staring at his hands and not her face when he says, “Your father, do you--do you hate him?” The words slip right past his better judgment and sit there on the bar between them until Mary clears her throat and takes a drink. He’s spent four months imaging he’d already seen the sharpest points of all her corners, but when he hazards a glance in her direction, the glass that was just full is now empty and her knuckles are very nearly white where they’re pressed against the bar.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He wants to say something else, wants to have cause to do anything other than apologize, but she’s got her shoulders angled so slightly away from him, just barely tucked into herself. “Please, I didn’t mean anything, I just.” He runs his fingers through his hair, drops his elbows onto the bar and his head into his hands. His mouth is dry; his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and the cotton wool feeling in his head presses against the back of his eyeballs. He breathes out and tries to get his bearings. “I’ve had too much to drink. I shouldn’t have said anything, I--”

“I don’t hate him.” He can just barely hear her over the sound of the music, the thrumming of the crowd. She’s still turned mostly away from him but she twists to run her cheek against her shoulder and then meets his eyes--just for a second. His hands curl into fists. If they didn’t he’s fairly sure he’d find them wandering toward her wrists, her elbows, the planes of her shoulders. She may be slight as anything but he’s never thought her truly small until just now. The shape of her pricks at his memory. I thought you’d look more like Patrick. It makes his breath catch in his chest.

Their shoulders are a whisper apart and his chest shifts, contracts; his tongue feels loose and stupid and brave. “I think sometimes you’re one person, the way people talk. The way you hold yourself.” He knows he ought to stop talking, that whatever thin ice he’s skating toward is unlikely to hold his weight, but there’s a piece of hair that’s come loose from the knot at the crown of Mary’s head. She tucks it back behind her ear, pinches her lips together and doesn’t say anything. He can feel the warning bells at the outskirts of his mind slip back beneath the pounding of the music. I don’t hate him. “And then sometimes, I think you’re someone else entirely.” Matthew leans in, just a fraction of a whisper of an inch, and all the skin on his body feels anxious and wanting. The lights all around them slide from blue to pink. “What do you look like Mary?” Her eyes go wide and unfocused and he wants to kiss her so badly his fingers itch.

Sally May was bright and lovely, sun golden and so, so young; Mary is lovely, amazingly so, but she’s brittle and tired, too. It shouldn’t make her more beautiful, the way her whole body shudders a little when she finally takes a breath--but it does. Her eyes are fixed somewhere on the back wall. Matthew’s eyes are fixed on her. He wants to curl his fingers in her hair and press his lips to the stretch of skin beneath her ear, slide his hand up her waist and slot his fingers one, two, three against her ribcage. He wants to lick the champagne from the underside of her lip. He wants a lot of things and all he can do is turn away, stare across the bar and into the mirror. He feels the flush spread down his neck and chest, and--and he has definitely had enough to drink.

The silence between them lasts for a minute, or a lifetime. By the time Mary turns to look at him, her face is a cool, collected mask again, but he can see now--the effort it takes her to wear it, to tamp down the parts others aren’t meant to see.

He can’t think of anything to say so he doesn’t say anything at all, just swirls his glass and watches Mary out of the corner of his eyes while she drums her fingers against the bar in front of her.

“Mary, are you coming back? We miss you.” A hand settles on the bar between them, Kemal wrapping himself around her and pressing his lips to the side of her neck. Matthew tries not to watch in the mirror, but Mary catches him at it anyway. “Evelyn won’t shut up about some old bird who wants to give him all her money and kidnap him forever and be his muse. I don’t care at all, come make him stop.”

Mary takes a deep breath and then smiles, just barely. “Kemal, this is Matthew Crawley. Matthew, Kemal Pamuk.”

Matthew tries not to be offended at the offhand nod Kemal gives him. His eyes are wide and unfocused, something just a bit off kilter about his stance as he wraps himself around Mary again and presses his lips back to the side of her neck. It’s not just rumours about Mary that Matthew’s caught up on, and by the look of him, most everything he’s heard about Kemal is true. Matthew’s hands have gone quite tight around his empty glass, but he keeps his eyes off the mirror and stares at the bar instead. The music suddenly feels far too loud, the whole club overwarm. He wants a glass of water and some fresh air.

“Next week,” Mary says. She’s spun the wrong way around on her stool, barely slumped back against the bar, and Kemal still has her hand in his, tugging her slightly toward their booth in the back. “I’ll see you then.”

Matthew nods and does his best to look cheerful. He tries not to think about Mary curled into herself or her cheek rubbing lightly against her shoulder, and definitely not about Kemal’s lips at her throat and his hands--everywhere. “Next week.” His voice sounds entirely unlike his voice.

He watches Mary trail Pamuk across the club and slide in next to him in the booth. By the time he’s finished settling his bill, she’s slumped back, Kemal’s arm around her shoulders. She looks toward him, just for a second, and he carries it with him all the way home--Mary’s face, eyes hooded and brushed pink with light.

--

Kemal presses her back into a corner of the stairwell and fixes his mouth to the place where her neck meets her shoulder and bares his teeth in a smile and bites down. Mary gasps. The light from the gaudy harsh fluorescents has gone soft and hazy at the edges and when she closes her eyes and pitches her hips against his, there are stars. There are pinpricks too, in the hard press of his fingers against the back of Mary’s thigh when he drags her leg around his waist. The inside of Mary’s chest feels unbound and restless. Whatever Kemal gave her at the club is filtering down from the crown of her head to the pit of her stomach and she can feel the buzz of it all along her skin where she’s pressed up against him. It makes her fist her fingers in his clothes and pull, and feels not unlike being turned inside out, and is amazing. Mary makes a greedy noise in the back of her throat--she needs his hands and his mouth, right now and everywhere. Heat blooms off her in waves that break just past the ends of her fingertips. It’s all she can hear and all she can see--heat and Kemal and stars and Kemal and she throws her head back against the wall and comes.

She’s dizzy in the stairwell and makes the trip to the flat on unsteady feet; Kemal’s got one arm around the small of her back and it’s heavy and possessive and warm and if Mary hadn’t already come twice, if the fight to keep her eyes open wasn’t surely a losing battle, she’d press him up against the door of his flat and make him tip his head back and scream. The thought makes her smile through the soft-focus chemical fog in her head and she presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw as he leads her through the door.

They fall into bed heavily, king and queen of a world that stops just past the edges of their bare skin. When Mary closes her eyes and drops off to sleep, she can still see the stars behind her eyelids and she rolls toward him and smiles.

She wakes hours later, half-queasy with a flutter in her stomach and Kemal’s arm draped heavily over her chest. She pushes him off with a grunt, stumbling through the dark room with her eyes still closed and walking a jagged line toward the toilet. Her head feels noticeably clearer and markedly worse; there are no stars in her eyes now, just ragged drum beats at her temples. She splashes water on her face and drinks straight from the tap to soothe her aching throat, still smoke sore from the night before. The room’s fully dark; she can’t have slept very long. She feels very likely still drunk, leaning against the door frame while the room spins and spins.

It’s not until she lowers a knee onto the mattress that she realizes something is wrong, and even then it’s a long time before she understands. The room stops spinning with a jerk and she stumbles forward onto her palms on the bed, one hand on Kemal’s waist and the other fisting into the sheets beside him. Mary stares and stares, at his arm, his chest, his throat, his cheeks, his wide open, unblinking eyes. His skin beneath her fingers is cold and she doesn’t understand--until she does. She reaches a shaking hand toward his throat and lets out a raw, aching moan when the fingers she presses to his neck close over still, clammy skin. No pulse, no frantic rush of blood. She pulls her hand away and the sound that escapes her throat is half a sob.

It feels very much like falling, like steady weight settling into her veins. She shuts her eyes and when she opens them again, everything is murky and smudged at the edges. She doesn’t realize until much later that it’s tears that blur her vision, because everything has gone coldly numb. She dresses in what feels like seconds, or hours, and the hands that pull her dress over her head are shaking badly enough that the zip catches in her hair. It barely registers .The sharp pull at her roots is no more than a faint buzzing behind her eyes.

She slips out as quietly as they’d sneaked in, down the hallway to the stairwell with her heels dangling useless from her hand. All the places in her body that were open last night--her chest had felt so vast and wide and wanting beneath Kemal’s hands and when he’d kissed her it had lasted for a thousand years--feel closed off and cold and very far away. When she passes the corner they’d hidden in last night, the weight in Mary’s chest that should maybe be grief is mostly just panic and she doesn’t let her steps slow at all.

When she pushes out onto the street, the city has the eerie, still quality of night sliding just into morning; the edges of the silence rub up against the empty roaring in Mary’s brain. She slips on her heels and pulls her jacket tight around herself and with no destination in mind, begins to walk.

She won’t remember, when she tries to, exactly where she went; she won’t remember hailing a cab or giving an address or the trip across the city. She’ll remember instead the most basic and useless details--the worn fabric of the taxi’s seat and the smell of flowers and mint that drifted back while the driver kept his silence through the city’s empty streets. She won’t remember paying him but she will remember the sky shading slowly into day over the edges of the windows at the top of her parent’s house.

She stands on the doorstep and rings the bell for what feels like the vast majority of her entire life. She hears it echo through the house, through her parents’ empty rooms, and with a sudden shot of self awareness, she prays her father isn’t home.

Cora answers the door--alone. Her eyes are wide as saucers and her hair is in curls against her cheeks. She’s still wiping sleep from the lines of her face when she looks out into the morning and sees Mary--who will only later think of what she must’ve looked like in the lightening sunrise on her mother’s front step, last night’s make-up still smudged across her face and panic coming off of her in waves .Cora tugs her in without a word and her hand is a vice on Mary’s wrist.

Robert is in New York; Cora is biting down on all the questions Mary knows she wants to ask. By the time they’re settled onto the sofa, tea untouched at their elbows and all the pieces of Mary’s story still howling around the room, the sky outside the windows is a blushing shade of pink. Mary keeps her eyes on the flashes of morning through the glass for as long as she can, until all the bones in her body stop their shaking and she can meet her mother’s eyes.

Cora’s looking at Mary in a way she hasn’t done for years and Mary can’t imagine what her mother sees right now, can’t imagine what she must look like. Desperate, surely, and very, very small; frail, most likely, never mind her hands curled into fists in her lap. When Mary speaks, her voice is a stranger’s. “He was dead. I woke up and he was just--dead.”

For all she looks as if she wants to, Cora doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t turn away. She keeps her voice very, very steady when she asks, “Are you sure you weren’t seen?”

It hasn’t been an hour and already half the details are muddled and the other half are gone completely. The dull lights in the stairwell, the hard glare off the headlights on passing taxis, and always, always Kemal’s eyes--unblinking and staring on and on forever. Mary isn’t sure of anything.

She squeezes her hands tighter and digs her nails into her palms. “You can’t tell Papa,” she says. Her voice is raw. “Please.” It’s not an afterthought so much as a fresh wound. “Please don’t tell him. If he doesn’t need to know, don’t tell him.”

Cora’s eyes are very hard and her cheeks look hollow. “It might come out, Mary.”

The tension in Mary’s jaw is infinite. “I’ll tell him if it comes to that.” Each word claws her throat as she says it and she realizes, with sudden clarity, what people mean when they talk about mercy. It takes more begging than Mary’s done in her lifetime, more begging than she’d ever hoped to do, before Cora agrees that Robert won’t know unless worse comes to worse and he must. By the time she gives in--with a nod like it pains her and for all Mary knows, it does--Mary’s voice is a rough whisper and she’s half-asleep in her chair. She stands up in the middle of her mother’s perfect, pristine sitting room and tugs awkwardly at the hem of last night’s dress. Her knees shake; her face is sore.

“I should go,” she says. She sounds impossibly young and feels every bit of it--young and unused and unsteady on her feet. She doesn’t protest when Cora takes her by the hand--very delicately and without a word--and leads her up the stairs. She doesn’t let go but to pull Mary’s dress over her head. Mary knows somewhere far away that she ought to feel self-conscious, a grown woman being undressed by her mother like a child, but she doesn’t feel anything until Cora stands her beneath the shower and turns the water on as hot as she can stand. Mary washes until she feels clean again. She washes until the water runs cold.

It’s Cora that bundles her into a towel and brushes out her hair. When she slips her robe over Mary’s shoulders, the scent of her perfume is a wave right at Mary’s chest. For the first time in a very long time, Mary feels like a girl playing at her mother’s dressing table, Sybil and Edith to left and right. How many times did they do exactly this? How many times did they color their lips and style their hair and play at a future that seemed bright and endless? It feels a thousand years ago now and very far away. Mary catches Cora’s wrist between her fingers and pulls her mother close. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?”

Cora runs her hands over Mary’s cheeks and sweeps her fringe from her forehead. She leans forward and presses a kiss to Mary’s temple, but says nothing at all.

She leads Mary down the hallway and into her old room. She peels the covers back silently and tucks herself in behind, knees fit to Mary’s beneath the sheets. Mary falls asleep with Cora’s hands rubbing circles against the small of her back. When she finally sleeps it’s fitfully; she wakes up gasping, alone and reaching. Her hands stretch out and on forever and close around nothing every time.