Shamelessly, shamelessly inspired by Pat Parker's Regeneration Trilogy. I know it's only a drabble, but this story gets a bit gory so again I'm going to warn you if you don't like blood and guts, maybe this isn't the story for you. But I think maybe you know that anyway. You seem like the sensible type to me.
He couldn't remember the exact date, but it was sometime in early May when Matthew Crawley finally returned to Downton Abbey. Discharged, they called it, pending a medical review. Clarkson called it shellshock. Matthew, well, he didn't call it anything. But then, Matthew hadn't spoken for two months.
His mother talked a lot about shellshock, but her words meant nothing. It sounded like she'd memorised a medical textbook. Shellshock, to Matthew, was not the result of one, big catastrophic event – it was more a culmination of a thousand tiny, horrible events. The bodies of the dead, the stench, the gas, the blood. Watching the trenches collapse and frantically digging his men free, knowing he couldn't save any of them, knowing a lot of them weren't even eighteen yet. Every time Matthew saw a young man get shot, well... all of these things were just grains of sand in an hourglass. How can anyone survive a life in the trench and not be shellshocked?
The mud.
Oh god, the mud.
Matthew had been in a hospital on the front line when it happened. A simple shoulder wound, they called it. One morning he got out of that hospital bed and went to report for duty and suddenly he couldn't speak. The doctors examined him but they couldn't find anything wrong with him, he just simply couldn't speak. That was when they sent him home from the front. And now he was lying on a military bed in the middle of the morning room at Downton, and Mary was sitting at the end of his bed, trying to wrestle his shoes off. He kicked her, lightly.
He scribbles on a piece of paper, "I've lost my voice. I am NOT AN INVALID."
And she rolls her eyes. Beautiful Mary. The thing that strikes him most about her is how clean she smells, and how wonderful. But then, he has been in the trenches for the past few months. Everything smells wonderful to him now.
"Clarkson says we need to check your feet." says Mary, "This would go a lot faster if you'd stop fighting me."
She hadn't stopped hovering since he set foot inside the house. Mothering him, leaning over him, looking as breath-taking and as unobtainable as she always had, smelling like soap and roses. He wants to climb all over her. He wants to kiss her hard, but he doesn't. His emotions swing wildly between revelling in her touches and resenting her bitterly.
Today, he is resentful. Mary manages to get one of his shoes off but he keeps squirming.
"Matthew," she says, "I will sedate you if I have to, so stop."
And it's not like he doesn't want to talk. He has tried, he really has. He talks in his sleep and sometimes he screams, but as soon as he's awake he simply can't make a sound. His Mother says he just needs time. Matthew wants to believe it.
He closes his eyes and all he sees is mud.
One day, after a particularly brutal day of being bombed to buggery, Matthew is walking along the trenches and he feels something hard squish beneath his foot. He looks down and it's an eyeball, parts of the optic nerve still attached. Matthew doesn't react. It's been a long day and he finds he can't process any more horror. The eyeball thing just sits in his head, with the rest of the gore.
Back in Downton, Mary is humming to herself.
Matthew thinks back to the day when Clarkson came to examine him, and happened to mention that some success had been achieved with mute soldiers and electric shock therapy. Mary had lost her temper that day. Wonderful Mary. With her porcelain skin and crisp, white blouses. Distracted, he lets her divulge him of his last shoe.
She takes one look at his socks, held up by the garters around his calves and she can't stop the smirk on her face. She twangs one of the garters, playfully.
"Good god, Matthew." she says, "They're just like stockings." Matthew raises an eyebrow but Mary is already peeling off his socks. His feet are all blisters and dried blood. Mary looks sad, but not nearly as sickened as she should be.
"I'll fetch Cousin Isobel." She says after a while and stands up. She strokes Matthew's hair before disappearing out the door and leaving Matthew alone, with his thoughts. Already he misses her terribly, and he knows that even if he did get his voice back he'd never be able to tell her.
How he needs her. How he clings to her. How he still has that bloody toy dog in his pyjama pocket, how he clutches it like a talisman whenever he thinks she's not looking. He closes his eyes, and all he sees is mud.
His mother says he just needs time. Oh god, how he wants to believe it.