fic | "every happiness" & "empty rings around your heart" | mary/matthew (original) (raw)

Sorry for the spamming lovelies.

I am posting these fics together as they could both be in the same universe.

EVERY HAPPINESS
Downton Abbey. Mary/Matthew.
PG. ~758
Written for ever_neutral for the prompt “I wish nothing but the best for you, too” at: The 'I'm Bored! Let's Have A Comment Ficathon!' Comment Ficathon.

When he comes back she doesn't know how to act.

The information that she has collected from his mother and her father is minimal, they know nothing more than that is alive. She cannot call an image of him to mind where he is hurt or crippled, he was so active and fidgeting and stubborn when he said his quiet proper goodbye to her in the presence of the rest of the family. The thought lingers in the darkest parts of her heart though; she thinks it might be best so he cannot run from her.

When he does come back though there was no amount of information she could have gathered to prepare herself for the reality of him being announced in the sitting room. She smiles broad and nervous and so truly happy she thinks she might, embarrassingly, start crying. But after looking over and smiling and inclining his head at her mother and grandmother and Edith he stares at her. His smile fades and after a long tense moment of silence her mother breaks it.

"You must be hungry."

It is so inane Mary fights the urge to shout and run to wrap her arms around him. To check for each limb and return regularly to feel his heart beat against her fingers. She does not though, she never would.

"I actually would like to see Lord Grantham before I do anything. I have some news."

And they all stand at attention for that, those who remained at home have gotten habits that will not quickly fade either. "News?" Grandmother finally asks.

"I should tell Lord Grantham first. It is nothing about the War." He promises with his easy smile.

They still all wait tensely, but dinner arrives and the men return and still nothing is mentioned of said news. And perhaps there was meant to be an announcement but such plans are dashed when midway through their meal Sybil arrives in such a state that Mary doesn't know wether to be proud or embarrassed of the way she has obviously been caught in the rain and quite possibly, subsequently shook out to dry off.

She separates from her mother, Edith, and grandmother to go check on Sybil, and of course unprepared is when she is alone with him for the first time since since the lawn party. She wonders vaguely as she stares at him if a lawn party has ever been quite as memorable as that, a War announced and heart broken into a thousand jagged irretrievable pieces in one go. Except, she looks at him and suddenly her heart is beating there, through out her whole body.

"I am so happy you are well." She says after the silence becomes unbearable. "You are well, aren't you?"

He looks down when she talks. "Yes. Thank you." It is quiet and it is nervous. But she cannot care and takes a step forward. "Cousin Mary," and that stops her, it is oh so distancing that she has no choice. "There is something I should tell you while we have this moment."

"Yes." And she is scared and hopeful all at once.

"I am engaged." And then he looks at her.

She feels every piece of herself that she has put together in the past three years over the idea that he might die without him knowing how much she loved him, and now she is standing there having to not cry because he's alive and he's not hers. And she honestly can't do anything but smile. "I wish you every happiness." She would quite like to move she thinks but her limbs feel oddly distant though she had had barely any wine at dinner. She finds her fingers pressing firmly against her thighs through the folds of her skirt, an effort to remain composed when all she wants to do is sink to the floor. Or perhaps hit him and tell him how much she loves him so that he'd understand. But she stands still until finally, awkwardly, he moves to pass her in the hallway.

He pauses in ending this torment. Stops and stand but a foot from her. "I do wish you will be happy too Mary."

And she wonders if he can see through her, can see how false her words are. How false they will always need to be with him now. "Thank you Cousin Matthew."

He takes his cue well, for once, and leaves her to start trying to see a future without a hope of him being hers.

EMPTY RINGS AROUND YOUR HEART
Downton Abbey. Mary/Matthew.
PG. ~1196
Written for dollsome for the prompt “winter morning” at: The 'I'm Bored! Let's Have A Comment Ficathon!' Comment Ficathon. (There is a happy entrance for the pormpt here.)

The pacing came through the wall back and forth, towards her, then away. Mary could hear him (and she knew it was him, could picture the wringing of his hands the way her father would offer him a scotch to steady his nerves, and the halting way he'd choke it down, nervous, nervous, nervous). He is waiting, and so is she now. She tried to be helpful! She was helpful during the war! But apparently she found the idea of childbirth far more distressing than bandaging a leg that had been partly blown away by a German shell. Her mother had sent her from Mrs. Crawley's bedside (Countess, Mary would have to call her one day, the title her Mother held, her Grandmother had held, and what would she be, what would she be? Lady Mary, never anything more, she thinks).

The door behind her opens and she can tell from the heavy way the door opens that it is her father not Matthew who is leaving. He does not look down the hallway and she is left alone to her vigil over Matthew's steps. Towards her, away, towards her, away: he is waiting for his child she tells herself as she digs her nails into the upholstered arms of the chair she sits in. It is not her place to comfort him (as it was not her place to meet him at the station when he returned, as it was not her place to smile at him and kiss him and press him to her bed with her lips and hips to remind him home, home, home). She hears the pacing stop, and suddenly that worries her (suddenly, and she nearly laughs at herself because of course she is worried, he is so scared and she would not wish for a second that he has any of this pain). She is determined when she rises from her chair, certain of her decision to watch over him when she reaches for the handle, positive that she will only check when she twists and opens the door. And then he is there, his profile clear and bathed in the soft winter light that comes through the windows of the library. And momentarily (as always) she is taken away by him.

He turns to look at her, and his mouth drops slightly in surprise (he has never learnt to properly conceal his feelings, and inside she smiles fondly). She finds her hand is twisting nervously against the handle she has not released and takes a breath to still herself, control herself. "I was removed from the sickroom," and she smiles self-depricatingly only to see his whole face drop, and it hits her. "I didn't mean sickroom! I meant the birth room- the- I-." Her unforgivable babbling foolishness is shut up by a bang. Her hands are raised to help explain and the door, once free from her nervous grip, flew shut. She is a dolt: a stupid, graceless, buffoon.

But suddenly Matthew smiles slightly.

It feels like her world brightens. (Stop, she tells herself. As she has had to tell herself the past two years he has returned. You gave him up, she thinks. And inside there is a part of her banging against her ribcage for release. A thump that has sat there since before the war: I never didn't love you. It was never for want of loving you. I would've said yes if we had had to live on the streets if only I was worthy of you. But she wasn't and she never would be so that feeling remained locked beneath her heart and her heart was to stay quiet underneath her breeding).

"I'd forgotten you could be nervous sometimes."

"Only on very rare and special occasions." She promises solemnly. His smile broadens and she takes one more step into the room.

With a sigh his smile drops and Matthew turns his head from her looking out the window. She can't help but go to him, she may not be able to love him, but she can at least be his family. "I am sure she and the child shall be fine." She says once she is close enough to speak to him quietly (to reach out, to touch him).

"You cannot-"

"No, no I can't." She cuts him off. "But Sybil and my mother and the Doctor are all with her, even if things don't go well there is a good chance that it won't be-" And she stops, as ever unsure how to talk to him truthfully without hurting him, "Matthew please have faith."

And then he turns and looks at her, and he looks so scared. "I don't want to lose this Mary."

She smiles past her own pain (used to it by now perhaps if she is being melodramatic). "Then trust me," she tries to sound light, she smiles easily and reaches out her fingers to just touch along the back of his hand. "Come now Matthew, I want for a healthy Crawley son to be born as soon as possible we do not want another generation of what happened to me. And you do know us Crawley women, I am quite in the habit of getting what I want."

He just remains looking at her, and she feels her smile weaken.

"I'm not so sure of that anymore Cousin Mary. Sometimes I think you are not at all who you were."

She takes a breath (if this was 5 years ago she would've smiled more broadly, more bitterly, you made sure of that, she would have told him unsure even of what she meant given the circumstances but knowing she wanted him to see what he had done). "If that is so, I would appreciate if you would let me keep the secret. But I hope if I am different it is only in that I would work for what I would want as well as expect it." She is sorry that she cannot help herself from telling him how much she has grown.

"Then why are you here?" He smirks.

"I told you, I was removed." She'd be more embarrassed by the way her little sister had shooed her out of the room if the whole process hadn't been quite so revolting, the sweating and screaming and blood: no Mary was glad she had been so rudely evicted.

He turns back to looking out the window. "I hope it won't count as too much work, but will you wait with me."

She takes a step forward, closer, her hand moving from brushing his to almost entangling, but no, not for her. So they wait looking over the frozen landscape. The sunlight slowly rising over Downton.

His hand is ripped from any nearness to her when an infant's cry rings out through the house. She waits, left behind (as usual there is a bitter voice that claims this). She will leave the new Crawley's to welcome their new life in solitude for awhile. She looks at the grounds and feels somehow stuck in the cold morning light that illuminates but a small portion of the otherwise dark room. She shivers from the cold draft coming through the casings of the large windows, suddenly alone.