Author's Note: I blame ALL OF THIS on Lavender-and-Hay, who is a sneaky little munchkin. I love you.
He has given the worst of news to dozens, if not hundreds, of families over the years. With compassion, yes, but with medical detachment as well; a patient is a patient and you cannot grieve for them all and remain sane in this field for long. He knows that, learned it through years of practice and four brutal years of war.
So why, then, does one more, one of hundreds, break his heart – leave him ready to rage, to scream, to ask why? To do what he has not done since he was just out of school, too tender and raw for professional compassion?
"I'm so sorry, Isobel," he says hoarsely, and watches the colour drain from her face. "I am so very sorry."
"Oh, I see." She sinks to a chair, careful, brittle, as though she might break if she moved wrong. She is so calm. Too calm. Her words are wondering, a little, still testing this new reality, hoping the illusion will shatter.
Her skin is so white. So pale. Too pale.
She has always been a lovely thing, not the cool satin of Lady Grantham's dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty, but soft and warm like velvet. Dark honey hair, creamy skin, with roses on her cheeks and a bright smile and always, always a fire banked or blazing in those doe-brown eyes.
But now – the fire is dim, so dim, and her skin is waxy pale, the roses gone. Even her hair, though it shouldn't be possible, seems to have lost its soft lustre, gone dull with grief that has yet to take her completely.
"There was no chance at all? He didn't suffer?" She is trying for the armour of her profession but she is failing, he can see the seams cracking, a spiderweb of fissures in her nurse's façade. This is not a patient, this is her son, and no one is that good. No one. Not even Isobel Crawley, who, he has known for years, is one of the best, the finest nurses he has ever known.
"No," he says softly, because if this will help her he will give it gladly, he will help her hold this façade as long as he can and when it shatters he will be there. "No. He didn't."
She nods slowly, carefully. "Good. How is Mary? Cousin Robert, Cousin Cora?"
Oh, good God, this is so like her, and his heart is breaking, breaking with a love he has denied too long and a grief he knows he will feel because of hers, no matter if he had never known Matthew Crawley at all; her grief is enough to spark his, and it should frighten him, but he has known his feelings for this woman for too long to be afraid now.
"Lady Mary is devastated, of course," he says gently, "but sleeping for the moment. Lord and Lady Grantham – they haven't been notified yet. I thought you should know first."
"Thank you." She tries for a smile, fails. Her eyes close, the first tears falling. He wants to scream, to rage at the injustice of it all; Lord and Lady Grantham have each other, Mrs Hughes and Mr Carson as well, dear God, even Mary has the baby, and Tom Branson, who will no doubt be able to comfort her some in the grief they now share. But Isobel, his Isobel he thinks now with a wild kind of hysteria, she is alone in this, alone in the worst storm of all.
She lowers her head to her hands, presses a fist to her heart, and shakes with silent weeping.
He touches her, so carefully, a hand on her shoulder, and kneels next to her chair. "It's all right," he says, hardly knowing his own voice. "You're safe here, Isobel."
It is then he hears the sobs tearing from her throat; he wraps his arms around her, pulls her into his embrace, and just holds on as she finally breaks in truth.
She is a broken thing in his arms and it is tearing his own heart apart to see her like this; Isobel Crawley is not broken, never broken, but oh God she is now and he is helpless, so helpless, because what are all his healing skills worth if he cannot heal her heart?
The storm goes as quickly as it came. She is standing and smoothing her skirts, re-pinning her hair, futilely wiping the tearstains from her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says, and there is that brittle smile again, "you must think me terribly silly."
"Silly!" he explodes, clearly startling her, "good God, Isobel, right now I don't know how you're standing!" He reaches for her hands, then thinks the better of it; gives up, ends with his hand fluttering somewhere over her shoulder. "Isobel," he says again, wonderingly, and she looks up at him with bright teary eyes and a sob hitches in her throat and then she is taking his hand and kissing his palm once, twice, and clutching it to her cheek.
He stares at her in pure astonishment until she looks at him again and says, "Please."
That's all; just "Please."
He cannot mistake her meaning, not with how she is touching him, and he fights it blindly, he is too weak with love for her to be this when all she needs is someone.
"No," he says, trying for firm, but only managing a shaky denial. "Not like this, Isobel."
"Please," she says again, and his heart breaks afresh. "I need… please." Her eyes are wild, plaintive.
"I won't," he says again, trying to convince himself as much as her. "Isobel, you don't know what you're asking."
"Don't I?" The fire is back in her eyes at last, and she takes his face in her hands. "Richard Clarkson, I have loved you since the first months of the war and loved you in silence. Don't you think I didn't know exactly what you were asking of me the other day; I lied to your face because, God forgive me, I have loved and lost once already and nothing, nothing I have ever felt for a man has come close to what I feel for you. I am sorry, I am so terribly sorry."
He cannot breathe. Cannot think.
"And now?" He cannot bear to hope.
"And now I need you, to remind me that not everything is black and cold, that my world is not gone just because Matthew is dead. Please. Make me feel anything but this, I am begging you. Love me, Richard," she says desperately, "please, I very badly need you to love me now. I was a fool to let you go once. More the fool would I be to do it again when I need you more than ever." She presses his hand to her wet cheek. "Make me alive, Richard. You're the only one who can."
He is lost, forsworn; he cannot walk away now. He is not a saint, just a man in love, and the woman he loves wants him to love her. She loves me, he thinks fiercely, great God she loves me. Come what may, I won't let her go again.
Then her mouth is on his, soft and wet with tears. Her soft slim hands fist in his coat; he clutches her close, so close. "Isobel," he gasps, kissing her cheeks, her face, her eyelids. "Oh, Isobel." He fumbles with the buttons of her gown, working blindly, mouth still fused with hers, unable to part. She has his jacket off already; is working at his shirt, his trousers.
"Please," she says again, that desperate sob.
"Hush," he soothes, trying to calm her, to soothe if he can. "Oh, darling, hush. Let me, please let me."
Her knees break beneath her, suddenly; he catches her up, and she is still kissing him, and he is still kissing her, frantic and broken and needy.
He doesn't know how many buttons scatter when he pulls the gown from her shoulders, and he doesn't care. He will find them all if need be, on hands and knees, re-stitch every one himself after this is over; until then none of it matters. Her gown falls away, pooling around her waist. The cramped cot in the back room is small, too small, but neither of them care now. He lays her on the thin mattress, her hair spilling free around her shoulders, so much longer than he ever dreamed, and he clutches great handfuls of fragrant honey silk.
Thank God she unhooks her own corset, never worrying about the laces; the front busks come apart, and she laughs, wild and brittle, broken in her grief and her ecstasy, arching her back and her hips, shoving cloth and whalebone to the floor. Her chemise is so thin, skimming over every lovely curve and line of her.
She is so beautiful.
He presses his mouth to her belly, buries his face there, as her hands curl in his hair. He is close, so close – the scent and heat of her is drugging him, he is gasping for air that is not an opiate and yet he cannot pull away.
"More," she begs at last, tugging fretfully at her own hem, at his drawers. She is touching him everywhere, small competent hands on his skin, curling over his shoulders, kisses raining on his chest. "Please, my love."
Her small hands curl around him then, around the hot hard length of him. "Christ," he gasps, "Isobel, darling, stop. You – Isobel!"
She takes his hand, presses it to the heat of her centre through her chemise, and he is done. He rucks the fabric up around her waist, too impatient to bother with removing it altogether, then curls his fingers against bare skin, into the slick wet warmth of her, and she keens out a high thin wail and arches desperately into his hand. All the air has left the room; he cannot breathe, let alone think, when his own skin is fair to bursting with want and love, six years of it, of watching her work, of the practical swish of her skirts, of flared tempers and side-by-side teamwork and the kind of understanding that comes of being cut from the same cloth, that ancient cloth of healers who work and work and try not to feel too much until feeling is all they can do. He has seen her in nursing greys and formal gowns, in cool competence and alight with the need to heal, to fix, to soothe and knit together skin and muscle and bone; infuriating, maddening, and so kind, how could anyone alive be so kind?
She arches again, half off the small narrow bed, and his fingers are deep inside her now, she is rutting shamelessly against them, asking without words, wanton and Christ, oh Christ so beautiful. She is so tight after so long alone, but even now he can feel her softening around his fingers, damp and wanting for the first time in what must be years, decades even.
"I can't," she gasps, panting it, "please, I…"
"Yes," he says, and curls his fingers again, because suddenly he has to see her, has to give her this before anything else. "Yes, Isobel, my Isobel, yes you can…"
And perhaps out of the ashes can come something holy after all, because she cries his name as she comes, over and over again, like a mantra, like an anchor, like a prayer.
When the aftershocks are over she reaches for him, arching again, asking without words, and he has held out as long as he can; he settles himself over her, and she sighs as though to welcome his weight. With fumbling fingers she guides him into her – she gasps with the stretch of it, a tiny moan escaping her mouth, but when he tries to pull back she shakes her head – she is beyond words now – and curls her legs around his waist, her heels pressing into the small of his back, her nails biting his shoulders.
This is heaven, she is the most beautiful sight he has ever seen; not even Downton at sunrise can compare to this, and if she clings a little too tight, if she rocks a little too fast, if she is clinging to sanity by the smallest thread, he will let her take what she needs from him now, and pray they can sort things out in the end. He has known for years that if she asked he could not refuse, though all his better instincts tell him otherwise.
For the first and last time in his life, Richard Clarkson puts his trust in love and gives his heart away.
It's her kiss that shatters him in the end, when she kisses him like he's the only real thing in the world, like he's her only island in the storm. Her velvet brown eyes fix on his as she pulls his mouth to hers, and his gaze is still on hers when the world goes blinding white, splintering sharp like bright shards of crystal in the starlight.
By the time Lord and Lady Grantham arrive she has put herself back together, changed into one of the few old gowns she keeps here for the worst bloody days. She is still broken, still fragile, but their tryst has given her a veneer of wholeness, clear lacquer over shattered porcelain. It's enough to hold her together, at least.
He's glad that it's Mary who telephoned the Earl and Countess with the news, more because it spares Isobel than because it spares him. He murmurs his condolences and keeps his hand on Isobel's elbow; she seems grateful for the contact, though she's as distant as the moon, and it hurts a little after how he's seen her now, but he understands why, truly he does.
In the days and weeks that come she is by turns furious and brittle, heartbroken and distant. She rages and throws things, then crumples into sobs; some nights she begs him to take her, just take her, others all she wants is to be held, and yet others she can't bear for him to touch her at all. In public she is composed and dignified; at the hospital she is brisk and competent as always. It is only behind closed doors that he sees the depths of her grief.
But love is a healing thing, no matter how deep the wound. With every rage and tantrum and broken shattered night she seems to brighten a little more, to spark more of that old fire in her eyes, to gain redder roses in her cheeks.
And bit by sharp-edged bit, piece by broken piece, she begins to knit together again.
"I would have gone mad without you," she tells him late one night, seven or eight months on, and he knows that if he cannot find the courage for this now, he never will again.
"I think I would go mad without you," he says, sliding out of bed and dropping to one knee beside her.
She stares at him in dawning comprehension.
"Will you? Isobel, darling, will you?"
"Yes," she says simply, tears brightening her eyes. "Oh, yes."
And for the first time since before everything began, Isobel Crawley smiles in truth.