the 'i'm bored! let's have a comment ficathon!' comment ficathon

[dollsome]

Presenting ...

The
'I'm Bored! Let's Have A Comment Ficathon!'
Comment Ficathon

(My reasons, they are profound.)

RULES1. Bring all your fandoms, all your characters, all your pairings! Specificity, who needs it

Comments

downton abbey -- edith/sir anthony -- you were all my possibilities

[philliebird]

When he drives her home from the opera, he asks her a million questions. Did she enjoy it? Had she ever seen it before? What did she think of the prima donna? And the way that the ending had been staged? At first, she responds tersely; after years of disappointment leading her to force her way into a conversation, she is completely unaccustomed to being invited to lead it. He seems not at all bothered by her apparent noninterest, simply persists in asking, asking, asking. And she finds herself letting loose paragraphs of thought, thought that is not thought through a dozen times to insure that it will be exactly what she wants to say.

She forgets to watch the stars prick into the smooth sky and instead bears witness to a most surprising transformation: Sir Anthony’s face is growing younger, his eyes brighter. He laughs easily, unlike solemn Patrick. (Solemn Patrick leaping out of his seat to lend Mary his arm, Mary who turns her face to look back at her. Solemn dead Patrick, floating on the top of the sea or sunk way to the bottom of it but always gone gone gone. The nightmares should have stopped by now.) She forgets to be exultant that she was invited instead of her and lets words keep flowing out of her without catching any of them.

It has gotten very late but she is not the least bit tired: she wants Sir Anthony to drive right past Downton Abbey and drive and drive until they reach the coast and she can see for miles. And because she has been letting all of her thoughts out, this one tiptoes out as well, all brash and brazen and so like something Sybil would say. Sir Anthony looks younger than ever when he says, “Then one day we shall,” and Edith realizes that she has just made him happy without trying, that he found her pleasing as she was.

Sitting there in his fancy car, wearing a dress that Mary sneered at, she forgets a great deal of things: all the times her mother looked past her and her father just shook his head sadly; Mary twisting her arm like a snake, Sybil speaking like a pamphlet instead of a sister, Anna threading fingers through her hair as if she were Medusa. All the grievances fade into hissing whispers that sound more like the wind than anything else, like a faraway wind that chills its way straight through somebody else’s heart. Edith feels warm in her light stole when Anthony looks at her, feels like summer and toasted cheese and soft puppies climbing into her lap.

But eventually the Abbey stands before them and Anthony opens the door for her so graciously but he is pointing the way back to the world where she is the plain one, the embittered one, the one that isn’t really there. In his eyes, she sees the possibility of something else, the possibility that she could stop trying all the time and just be. She felt a sudden burst inside, and she wanted, of all things, to run up and see Mary and find out when it all went so wrong.

She had been waiting for a man to make her feel like she was beautiful when he came along and made her feel like she was good.

Re: downton abbey -- edith/sir anthony -- you were all my possibilities

[dollsome]

OH MY HEART. This is so beautiful and sad and exactly right; Edith, you break my heart. The sense of discovery in this, that dawning realization that he enjoys her company and how she reacts to it, is so well-written and heartwrenching. This makes me want to read all the Edith fic in the world.

Re: downton abbey -- edith/sir anthony -- you were all my possibilities

[philliebird]

thanks very much! i always end up liking characters when i write from their perspective, so i feel much more sympathetic to edith now. however, i do kind of think she deserves a lot of what she gets from mary, which is why i wrote this scene instead of an actual reconciliation. will they continue to fight or will the war lead them to finally grow up?

ohhhh downton abbey, you inspire so many many feelings in me.