into my arms - part I
"love is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person. to love someone isn't just a strong feeling: it's sometimes a decision, occasionally a judgement, but always a promise."
There are some days where he was lost and unreachable from the start. Days in which he'd wake up in a fog, when his head didn't quite seem to stick to the present. Normally, he'd prevail on Bates to help him wheel himself around the estate or tour round the farms and cottages- against the doctor's explicit instructions, avoiding his mother, and the family at the big house in case he cracked.
Most importantly, he would avoid Mary.
He didn't wish for her to take the brunt of a flashback or witness the moments of acute fear or depressive episodes he would experience when his mind shifted to nowhere at all and then ventured back to the horrors of the trenches. War. It was his nightmare and his reality and his past and it plagued him still. It was a rare occurrence, but some days the sickening dread and terror was unavoidable. It ended up alright, the feeling would be drowned by the fresh air of the Yorkshire countryside and the peaceful tranquillity of the Grantham estate. It was the familiarity that kept him sane and pulled him from his depths.
Only there were times, incredibly infrequent times, that he couldn't see coming. They were rare and unpredictable and hellish, but it was the sudden appearance of an acute uselessness that frightened him. He loathed being immobile, an impotent cripple that needed help with the most atrocious and simple of tasks, and when the knowledge of the years that fell before him consisted of being cared for like an infant invaded his thoughts, he often dropped so far into fits of despair that he felt like a petulant child on the edge of a tantrum. He wanted to break everything that surrounded him and yell until he was hoarse. The fact that he couldn't move himself far enough out of bed to even indulge his violent whims only frustrated him even more. He didn't want to exist like this. He simply couldn't bear it any longer.
Perhaps it was because the evening weather turned so suddenly. Perhaps it was just his mind playing up again. Perhaps it was the cracking of thunder and bursts of lightening that punctuated the rhythmic pounding of the deluge against the Abbey windows, but Matthew didn't feel himself clouding over until the sounds of guns and shells and shouting were filling his ears as if he were back there- back in hell. He could smell the mud and the remnants of gas attacks, the stench of the dead and the foul dismembered body parts strewn across no man's land. Rats ran across his feet. He was cold and damp, his sores and blisters and wounds returned with a seething vengeance, the overwhelming horror struck his lungs and rid him of breath.
He was crouched in the trenches, but at the same time he knew he would never walk again. He realised how degraded he'd become and wallowed in the pain of not being able to fend and live for himself. He disgusted himself, just how he knew he must disgust everyone around him.
Her hands were full, which is why she hadn't knocked. Before the war, she would never had been required to carry a tea tray, nor would she have wanted to, but it was once every afternoon that she was able to bring Matthew his tea and she cherished the conversation and simply the company that those visits afforded her. Other than these moments, the rules of etiquette and restraints of society prevented her from being alone with him. The doctor had not yet deemed him strong enough to venture outside so she could not push his chair and walk with him, but he had at least been brought home from the hospital and most evenings she'd find him sat in his chair by the fire, a book resting on his blanketed legs.
This evening was not one of those evenings. She dreaded to think what would have befallen, had she had the capacity to knock and wait.
For when she pushed in, she dropped the tray in one terrible tremble of her hands and everything on it was sent to the floor in a violent crash of broken china and hot liquid. She screamed for him to stop, as though the sickening smashing of the tea things was not sound enough for the entire household to come running, and immediately stepped over the debris of her shock to wrestle the gun from his hand.
"Matthew, no!"
He was sat, one shaking hand bracing a gun to the side of his temple and his cheeks passed his tears over his set jaw. Set it may have been, but his chin trembled all the same. He turned away from her reach when she made a grasp for the pistol and caused himself to fall sideways from his chair into the wall. He scrambled away from her, breathing harsh and rapid like a panting dog, frantically looking around him before he keeled in on himself and hid his face in his arms.
Mary stooped, changing her panic to control and slowly taking the hilt of the gun from his slacked grip and discarding it away. He pressed the balls of his hands harder into his eyes and she heard him mumbling something about mud through his rasping before he retreated against the wall further, eyes wide with terror, skin pale and slick with a cold sweat as he yelled.
Gas. Gas. Gas.
She knelt, bringing her hands to his hair, at a complete loss, and nudged his head so he rested just below her collar bone. His tears seeped into the breast of her blouse barely quelled by the soothing sensations of her fingers sifting through his dishevelled blonde hair.
"It's alright. It's perfectly alright." Her gentle mumbles calmed him slightly – only not enough to pull him out of his nightmare, and she reached for her handkerchief to wipe the vomit from his chin just as her Papa and Bates rushed in to see what the source of the commotion was.
"Mary- what on earth is going on?" Robert asked, alarmed and even more so when he saw the service pistol lying on the floor by his eldest daughter's feet. Bates took the initiative and discreetly moved it into an empty drawer in the dresser.
"Matthew's not well." Mary voiced, her resolve wobbling when Matthew groaned against her chest and whispered something about fixing bayonets. "I need help getting him to bed."
Without a further word, Bates and Robert took one of his arms each over their shoulders and manoeuvred Matthew onto his bed. Mary stood by, wringing her hands nervously, her heart still thunderously pounding at the image of Matthew holding a gun to his head. What must he have been feeling to think of such measures?
Another nurse came bustling in, probably on her Papa's instructions, and, together with Bates, she turned Matthew onto his side, giving him a shot in his hip which immediately made him droopy and drowsy. He still looked panicked as his eyes closed and Mary pulled a chair up to his bedside, laying a gentle palm on his forehead and stroking over his hair in a soft motion.
Matthew was unconscious when the nurse left. Bates went to fetch a maid to clear up the broken contents of the forgotten tray and bring up a second set of tea. Robert stood next to his daughter, watching her take one of Matthew's hands in hers and squeeze it gently.
"Mary," he started cautiously, "what was he doing with a gun?" Mary couldn't bear to look at her father, instead she closed her eyes and covered her mouth with a still steadily shaking hand.
"My god," Robert gasped, swallowing the lump that arose in his throat. "I had no idea he was so unhappy."
"Neither did I." Mary croaked. "I really thought he was doing well."
"I do feel so very sorry for him," Robert said, gazing down at the young man he'd come to think of as more of his son. "I'm afraid relying on others is a concept that works totally against his principles."
Mary closed her eyes. She wished it weren't true but it was.
"I'll stay with him. Someone should be here when he wakes." Mary nodded decidedly and placed a chair by his bedside, smoothing over his hair and gripping his hand in both of hers.
"I agree," Robert nodded. He moved to pat Matthew's shoulder briefly and for a second a blazoned paternal hue crossed his eyes that shocked Mary. "Should I tell Isobel?"
"No," Mary whispered firmly. "That is, it's not our secret to share. If he wants to tell Isobel that's his decision." Robert had to admit he agreed with that. "I know Bates won't say anything."
"I'll leave you. If you need anything ring or come straight to me." With that, Robert moved silently from the room, taking a moment once the door was shut to heave out a shuddering breath. Poor Matthew. Poor dear Matthew.
Neither of them knew how to gather the words to form an appropriate sentence, and for a long time after Matthew awoke he just stared in bitter silence at the ceiling. Mary saw his clenched jaw and trembling lips, but pretended not to for his sake. The more savage of his thoughts told him he should wrench his hand from her grip and turn so as not to look at her.
He couldn't look at her.
But he also couldn't bear to turn away- couldn't bear to lose the ounce of warmth and comfort that her hands clasping his provided. So, he stayed put, heaving all his remaining self-control to stop himself blubbing in front of her.
Dear god- he'd already sobbed and screamed and been sick- there was no need to degrade himself further.
"Matthew…" Her voice was imploring and hurt but it broke off with an anguished sting. The lump in her throat suddenly seemed to grow.
"Please. Leave me." He managed to hold himself together for those three words, his eyes hard and stubborn, still not looking at her properly.
"I'm not going anywhere." She stated plainly. She was every bit as stubborn as he was and determined to make him see it. "Not until you promise me you will never, ever, do anything like that, ever, again."
Matthew didn't say anything. The meaning behind his silence broke her heart.
"Just go." He said bitterly. "I don't make empty promises."
"I wouldn't be empty!" She demanded hysterically.
"Oh, but it would." He laughed, a hideous hollow laugh that was so unlike him it frightened her.
"Why?" She demanded harshly. "Why would you do it? How could you even think about such a thing?"
"Because I can't do this!" He broke. "I can't be an invalid for the rest of my life! I just can't. I can live with myself, much less expect anyone to live with me! I disgust myself. I disgust everyone."
"Oh Matthew, that's ridiculous!" She dismissed. He did not disgust her. They were his family and they loved him, he couldn't disgust them.
"I do not want to live!" He cried. "Not like this."
"Did you ever consider what it would have been like for us? To lose you? What about your mother? What about Papa? What about me!" Furiously, she wiped the tears from under her eyes and took a deep, angry breath, shuddering before continuing. "If I had done one more bed downstairs before taking the tea up. If I had come in a minute later I would have found you sat there with your brains blown out. Did you even consider how that would have felt for me? To walk in and find you dead."
Matthew closed his eyes, knowing he'd been selfish in that respect. He couldn't imagine how it would have felt for her to have found him dead in his chair with a gun in his hand. He felt sorry for it.
"What if it had been me? What if I'd been thrown off when riding and broken my spine? How would you have felt it you walked into a room and found me with a gun to my head? Would you have been fine with me offing myself? Would you have even cared?" She fumed and rampaged, mad like a raging bull as her words span completely out of control. "How would it have felt? To walk into a room and find me with a gaping hole through my head looking at you with unseeing eyes while my corpse…"
"Stop!" Matthew commanded. So loudly that it threw her off course and shocked her mid yell. "You know I care. You know I could never let you… do that. You know it would kill me if I found you like that. You know I love you, so why do you taunt me?"
"Because I love you!" She finally broke. "Because it would kill me to find you dead just as much as it would kill you vice versa."
"Mary…" he reached up a hand and wiped under eyes, cupping her jaw gently before pushing himself into a sitting position, heaving his full body weight with both arms- his physical therapy having paid of greatly.
"Mary, I'm sorry. Truly."
"Then promise me. Promise me you won't try it again." Her demand was soft, but none the less stoic and determined.
"I can't promise it, I won't make you a promise that I can't keep." He told her.
"Then promise it anyway." She said. "Even if you don't believe it now, if you promise it then you won't do it because you wouldn't go back on your word even if you wanted to. I know you. Please just promise me."
Somewhere in her uncertain words he found her desperation. Immediately, an urge in his heart willed the words to spill from his own mouth. He loved her enough to promise it, he knew he did, and he comprehended her logic. He would never break a promise to Mary. He couldn't. Which is why he couldn't say it- he didn't want to live like this. His mother told him it was just his pride, his deep-seated need to be self-reliant and his hatred of dependency, and perhaps she was right. But that didn't change his feelings.
It also didn't change that he loved her. And he loved her too much to hurt her. And he loved her too much to stop himself responding innately to her request.
"I promise you."
He could never break a promise to Mary.