A/N: So I should probably begin by saying this is the first piece of fiction writing I've done for about 14 years, and my first ever foray into the world of fanfiction…I had read but hadn't give much thought to actually writing anything until near the end of last year I started innocently watching S1 of Downton Abbey and became, it's fair to say, completely obsessed. In particular, I fell head-over-heels for Anna and Bates, who are so utterly adorable and give me *all of the feelings* (honestly, I can't quite remember the last time I was so in love with a fictional couple). They've had some happiness but they really deserve more, and if it isn't going to happen on screen (which I remain hopeful it will do…eventually), then well, we'll just have to write…
So this idea came to me and refused to go away until I actually did something about it. It was meant to be a stream-of-consciousness in Anna's head, and that's how it started off in scribbles, but as I was writing it just grew and grew, and well, here it is. I have to warn people – there's not a lot of plot here. In fact, not much at all. (I have some sparks of other ideas which I hope to develop, and one in particular which I plan to be more episodic, but again, I'm not really sure if there will be too much in the way of plot there either…) Also, this does veer somewhat into ultra-fluff territory at points. I've tried not to make it too cheesy cliché (and most likely failed), but hey, everyone needs a bit of fluffy goodness now and then, right? Especially A/B fans - who write amazing fic, it should be said (my attempt is not as near as wonderful as many of the fics I've read here in the past few months, but what the hell…)
Disclaimer: Downton Abbey and all of its inhabitants are the property of Julian Fellowes/Carnival/ITV and are nothing whatsoever to do with me. But if I had my way…
Additional credit to Matthew Arnold, Edward Thomas and Robert Frost for the poetic words of inspiration. (and apologies for the rubbish title – it'll come clear at the end, or maybe at the start…?)
"Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
Only-but this is rare-
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know."
Part I: Running in Circles
The day, when it arrived, was the precise day that summer had chosen to turn to autumn. Change had come on instantaneously, erupting without the slightest indication or warning sign; nature was clearly greatly impatient to break forth with its transformation, unwilling to wait a moment longer. The trees that surrounded and shrouded the grounds of Downton, ones that stood as tall and proud as the great house itself and had encountered innumerable shifts in season over not years but centuries, had effortlessly entered another cycle in their ever-revolving lifespan. All around foliage had been set aflame; a blaze of colour sweeping across the skies. Having moved past the innocence of spring into the awakening of summer those small buds had confidently come into their own, embraced the opportunity to evolve, to transform; imbued and enlivened with renewed spirit, now burning bright and beautiful for all to see; a final flourish before they fell gracefully to the ground and everything was to begin again.
Gazing from the window that morning, casting her eyes over the glow outside, Anna should have appreciated the rapid alteration. Autumn had always been her favourite season – if she so wished, she could have taken its swift appearance on this very day as an unmistakeable and overwhelmingly good omen, a lucky charm of sorts; some time ago she would have taken this view to her heart without question or doubt. It had also not escaped her that the sudden and startling change in the physical atmosphere was really quite appropriate, everything considered. If she had been an onlooker, watching what was happening from afar to someone else, she would have smiled assuredly, even laughed to think how funny it really was, and been reassured that the scene had most certainly been set for a happy outcome. But as it was she could find little joy in what she saw before her; she could not rouse her lips to curl softly upwards to acknowledge the merest hint of humour at the coincidence.
Neither could she claim to have been affected with the same surge of energy or noticeable transformation that the leaves on the trees had displayed so proudly. She had remained the same inside as she had done for the past eighteen months, the frenzies of intense fear that had overtaken her whole being at the times of the unceremonial arrest and the unbearable trial fizzling gradually away to leave a dormant sorrow; the hope she had once possessed dwindling to near-depletion and instead replaced with a desperate, resolute longing. It seemed only right somehow that she should feel the sensation so intensely; she had grown reluctantly but thoroughly accustomed to it over the years, in all of its various nuances, and had perfected its self-containment to a fine art. It was the feeling that seemed to define her existence entirely; why should she expect that it would suddenly disappear, even with the prospect of it finally being fulfilled once and for all? Nevertheless, she had expected that there would have been some change within her when she had arisen this morning, if only very small, as a recognition of what was immediately ahead. But so far: nothing. She felt just as unsettled and confused as she had at the breaking of every dawn, the boundary between dreaming and reality swiftly shattered, the temporary and brief displacement of who or where she was wrenched away when she blinked in the emerging light, turned over and realised once more that he was not beside her and she must face another day alone. With each sunrise, the dull ache at the centre of her chest embedded itself a little further and increased in size and weight, invading her body. Somewhat strangely a sense of calm overcame her, but instinctively she felt that its presence wasn't entirely positive; it was not so much a source of comfort and encouragement that everything would turn out for the best but an acceptance that it was to always be this way; that she would be eternally with him but without him: hearts joined but selves separated, stranded, never to return. She felt numb, as though every drop of emotion had been wrung from her. Perhaps she had transformed without realising it, changed into another version of herself; one that was beaten and broken irreparably from everything she had encountered and was ultimately altered into something very different - someone that she wasn't supposed to be but which unavoidable circumstances had conspired to create against her will. She hoped and prayed to God that this was not the case.
Perhaps she did not feel the prospective change, would not allow it to so much as brush past her like the lightest of autumn breezes, never mind let it into the very centre of her being, as she couldn't quite conceive that it was actually due to happen, despite the fact that she must have asked Mr Crawley the same questions what seemed like a million times; Was it really true? Would this be the day – the date given to her less than a week ago, when plans were finally secure – that he would be truly free? Free from all accusations and burdens; free to return to Downton, his position, his home: her. Every time she repeated her pleas – and they would spring from her mouth at least every couple of minutes in the small space of time she encountered him in the house each day, her words echoing the same unspoken thoughts that occupied her mind every waking moment – Mr Crawley would smile warmly, place a firm hand briefly on her shoulder and pledge his utmost confidence and certainty in the matter. Still, she could not silence her doubts, the nagging voice in her head that kept taunting that it could not possibly be true, something was bound to fall through, go wrong and she would continue to wait; would wait endlessly for a day that would never arrive for the rest of her life. To believe, to place her trust implicitly in this imminent event seemed to tempt fate incredibly, and that force had certainly not been kind to her. Indeed, it had unleashed some of its cruellest twists with impeccable timing, always delivering its blows to coincide with her purest, most ecstatic bliss; a shadow lingering in wait to extinguish the light, a painful but necessary reminder that life was not about roses and rainbows and enduring happiness – if that was not the case for the privileged and inherently fortunate such as the Crawleys, it most definitely would not be the case for her. She wanted sincerely to grasp the possibility in the air, pin it down and clutch it tight to her, let it envelop every fibre with steely strength and unshakeable belief. But she knew if she dared to reach out her fingers, it would disappear quicker than the mist that bathed the morning. She could no longer put her faith in promises, no matter if they came from the most well-intentioned sources. Certainly, she had no faith in her own judgements anymore, so much had they wavered wildly back and forth: from wishful thinking one moment to hopeless resignation the next.
She turned her back to the window and the sea of searing colour outside, returning to the gloom of the muted room, the life seemingly seeping from her surroundings too. She wondered if that was a cause or an effect of her inhabiting it. Her feet were rooted to the small spot; she was stuck still, her body turning to stone except for her eyes which glanced rapidly but aimlessly around and her mind which continued to race against everything. She knew she had to move, she could feel her nerves screaming out, but was temporarily unable to do so. Something fundamental had faltered within her, not for the first time. How ridiculous, she thought. It's not as if she was somewhere unfamiliar; she might understand being overcome by a swift terror if in strange surroundings but she was in the room she'd occupied it seemed almost all of her life. Perhaps that was just it; her life wasn't as it used to be, no longer could it fit neatly into one little compartment. She shouldn't even be here anymore, having to live in half a room with another housemaid. She should be in their own cottage, filling up every space. Not to be confined like she was here. Confined. A sharp pang of guilt spiked her and she recoiled at her selfishness. How dare she use that word to refer to herself? She had no right, given that at this moment only her husband knew the true and deeply unjust meaning of the word. Still, their souls were so closely connected that anything he felt was reciprocated by her to a lesser degree: an aftershock from an earthquake.
She shook her head, also shaking herself from mental stupor. Her eye was drawn to the shining silver glint of an object resting on the nightstand beside her bed, glistening intently; the only point of light in the dulled space. She gravitated towards it, the one thing that held her attention in the strange spell that she was still under. A pocket watch: a gift intended for John for his birthday from the Earl.
"Probably not the best choice, I realise. Cora and the girls are much better at picking presents than I am. But I've had this for years; it was given to me just before I went off to war. It's still running just as it was then, never lost a second in all these years. We always said it was a reminder of life; precious, running faster than can be comprehended, but always ongoing nonetheless. Enduring even in the face of adversity. I should have given it sooner. Hopefully it'll be a charm."
She could have cried. She did when she returned to the servants' hall; thankfully, she was on her own. Mostly she was able to hold back, restrain herself, but she was still prone to apparently random bursts of tears; not that anyone did so much as raise an eyebrow when she set off anymore except for Mrs Hughes, whose face was cast with motherly concern and a look that conveyed not only comfort but a distinctive kind of empathy; one which knew only too well the pain she was going through, spoke to it in its own language. She circled the watch into her palm and opened it carefully. A clock that was counting down. She held it up close to her ear, examining the steady ticks, beating rhythmically and reliably like a heart. Then she studied its face, the slow but sure hands working their way round and round. Still going; not stopped yet. She kept her eyes on it for some time, though it probably wasn't that long in the time it was measuring. She had another silly thought that the second she chose to look away would be the second it did finally stutter, jump millimetres backwards: stop. Hold her forever where she was; adrift and lost without a guide.
Out of all the things that had been thrown into disarray, it was time itself that had been most firmly shaken free from its fixings: spinning, slipping, removing her completely. It did not help that the past month had gone by in an almost incomprehensible blur. Most of it had been spent trying to track this man down – she had been told his name but had chosen to discard it; she did not want to personalise him, give him any other recognition aside from assigning the only name that mattered: the man who actually murdered the former Mrs Bates. Men had chased across the country, Mr Crawley and the Earl making hours of calls trying to trace exact whereabouts. When there was nowhere left to run and the conviction had been made, Anna was still left sitting on the sidelines, a passive spectator to her husband's fate, unable to ascertain whether it wasn't just all an illusion. Since then time had been moving in quite the reverse: even with the reliably quick pace of life at Downton keeping her endlessly busy, everything inside her head progressed in slow-motion. She wasn't sure it was simply anticipation: it was as if the walls that had held fast during the worst of it were finally giving way, crumbling beneath the weight.
A line of poetry echoed; something she had heard Lady Edith read from one of the letters she still received from the many soldiers she had befriended in the aftermath of war: Time swims before me, making as a day a thousand years. It did not so much swim before her but whirled and crashed. All at once it would wash over her and pull her under, the lights on the distant horizon flickering out one by one. Some days could pass in the blink of an eye; not especially eventful but full of seconds, minutes, hours that had flown away and were never to be revisited, inhabited instead with conversations, glances, smiles, kisses. Others – most – were endless. Crawling, barely even conscious; flowing into one another and flooding her senses. Dragging her down with them, making her just as slow and sluggish and drawing her closer to surrender. Looking in either direction offered little chance to escape. The future was out of bounds: a place where she may once have belonged, very happily, but that she was now banished from. Her refuge was the past, but that had receded even further out of reach; no matter how far she tried to run back to it, each passing day lengthened its distance a little more, ensuring she could never get to her desired destination. And yet she was surrounded by it everywhere she turned; the house breathing it out, the scenes of her past – their past – still living on but failing to fill her with life. It was not for want of trying. Every day she found herself lingering a little longer than she should in the places that personified their love; the courtyard where they would go each evening without fail to talk in private about everything and nothing, the adjoining gardens that they would walk through on the sunny Sunday afternoons they had free. Even though it had been unattended for some time and so never needed much attention, she would find the time every other day to enter the room that Lady Mary had arranged for them to stay in on their wedding night – the one and only night they had spent together as husband and wife, so long ago and such a small fragment of their relationship, but the memory of which returned to her night after night. However much she willed its revival, along with the other precious moments, she could not bring them back; didn't hold enough breath within her to get them past mere sentience. They were replicas, a spectrum of colours fading fast. All the while she continued to be swallowed by the blackness of the present: the ever-present. Always running in its circles.
Her hand ran the length of her narrow single bed, drifting from the covers crumpled after an exceptionally restless night to the silky smoothness of the outfit she had carefully chosen to wear laid on top of them. She didn't have that much to choose from but there was only ever going to be one option for today. Her wedding outfit. Unworn, untouched in her wardrobe since that wonderful day. It may not have been anywhere near as exquisite as Lady Mary's had been but to her it was beautiful. It had made her feel incredibly beautiful, especially when she caught sight of the smile sparking in John's eyes as he saw her arrive, appearing proudly on his face just before he took her arm in his and they entered the registry office together. The smile that extended and exploded into unabashed joy; the smile that she stole for her own. She stroked the long blue skirt and thought of that smile, hoped that today she would see it return. That the past would burst to life once more, unite with the present and carry them into a bright and blissfully happy future.
Her fingers sprung at once from the fabric up to her other hand, which was cradled instinctively over her left side of her chest. Like magnets they were drawn to the golden band that resided there. It did not glimmer anymore, not like the watch, its shine rubbed away with the amount of attention she had given it daily. A perfect circle, even though it had marked an imperfect beginning. Always ongoing; enduring even in the face of adversity. She would have no problem living her life in this circle. If only she could find a way back in.
Another A/N (I will shut up now, promise): I'm a music fanatic; lyrics give me unending inspiration and Snow Patrol are the love of my life. Some lyrics from their song Lifening (which I urge you to listen to if you don't know it; complete beauty) came to me when I was writing this part:
'Words of reassurance, but only if they're true/Just some simple kindness, no vengeance from the gods'
I think this would be exactly what Anna would want right then and there. Aside from the obvious…
