Downton Abbey Comment Ficathon
With the new season upon us, and fandom all extra-enthusiastic, I figured now would be a great time for this. Because there can never be enough Downton Abbey fic, and there certainly isn't enough now!
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On the third night of her vigil, she finds she has company.
Somewhere, deep in the weary recesses of her heart, she knows he is not coming back. That he belongs to another, that in truth she never had any right to him at all. She is a usurper, a thief, a foolish woman. But still, when all other eyes are closed and the house is filled with the slow, steady breaths of the dreaming, she finds herself drawn to this place, to this window. She will stand here, hands pressed against the cold glass, and stare out into the depths of night as if waiting to see something - a light, a movement, anything to herald his return. Her lips move unconsciously.
Bring him back. Bring him back safely to me.
This night, however, she pads across the polished floors in nightgown and robe, only to find she has been beaten to it.
Another figure. A ghost, half-visible, in the soft glow of the starlight, all shadows and mist and unseen things. Tall and stately where she is small, dark where she is fair, clad in lace and silk where she wears only the most sensible cotton. But as it turns, the look on her face - ah, the look on her face she recognises so easily. She sees it in the mirror every day.
“Lady Mary?”
“Oh,” the ghost-creature murmurs, stretching a hand to press against her eyes. “I didn’t realise anyone was here. I was…” she gestures helplessly, and seems to struggle, searching blindly for the words. “I couldn’t sleep.”
No, her mistress cannot sleep, and neither can she. She fears to sleep. Her dreams are all too regularly the stuff of nightmares, of his parting, of his words, or even - and she fears these dreams more than most - happier times, the laughter, the joy, the plans they had. She cannot bear to put herself through that again.
Besides, she must wait. What will happen if he returns, and she is not here to greet him?
Without word, without explanation and query, she moves to stand by her mistress, to take up her vigil.
The minutes slip away like silk, silent and gentle in the night.
“I know I am foolish,” her lady says, so quietly that it seems to be nothing more than the echo of another dream, the shadow of a thought. “I know - of course I know - that he is gone, that he is many miles away and he will not return like some thief in the night. But I have to keep watch - I have to wait, so that he might see at least one friendly light to guide him home.”
Of course this could all very well be dreams and wishful thinking, her own thoughts speaking to her; for it is late and she is tired and her mistress is not the sort of person to speak so. But she nods anyway, rests a hand on her lady’s cold, slim shoulder, and gazes back out over the miles.
For though it might take him a thousand days, over a thousand leagues, he must return someday; and she will wait for him.
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