A Life Half Lived
This is my secret santa offering to lady-morgen-crawley on tumblr. Thank you Patsan for organizing the secret santa exchange again this year!
This is the first chapter of the long canon era fic I've been promising myself to write for a long time now. I've gone back and forth in my mind and played around with plot and angst and what to do... and now's the time to just start it. I wrote a middle section chapter in August (Where My Heart Truly Rests) which I'm going to label separately now... but it can be read a preparation for the much longer story now in progress.
It is about the Great War...so some of it is going to be graphic (coarse language, graphic descriptions of battle and blood and wounds).
I hope you like it. I hope you leave comments and reviews and ideas and critiques! Thanks!
XX
The mud. The stinking mud. The fucking, stinking mud. Matthew scowled. He sank into the mud knee deep. His puttees, his boots, and his uniform indistinguishable in the brown muck.
Wiped his brow only to have the muck get in his eyes. The dripping rain down on his Brodie helmet. He could barely see. His gloves were filthy.
He had stepped onto the ladder where his boots came out from under him. He fell back down into the mud.
He sighed. 'Hell was the mud' had become a saying among the soldiers.
Ever present. It squelched in his boots.
It sucked. It drew you in like quick sands. Over his knees. Viscous. Tenacious. Determined never to be cleaned. It invaded every crevice of his skin. Slimy.
A nightmare.
Along with the complementary wet. And cold. And the rats. Coming out by the hundreds. Especially at night.
His unit was supposed to be relieved two days ago. Time to go back to the reserve line. To give everyone some rest. And to get clean. And to survive again until it was their time to return.
But the rail lines had broken down. And with it their relief for another two days.
He squinted through his wet eyelashes again. He was supposed to be readying two young subalterns for their first reconnaissance.
But the exhaustion, mind numbing exhaustion . He could not think straight. Unwanted thoughts ticked in his head. Of another life. A life he could hardly believed existed much less a life that he existed in.
He frowned. A deep, down to the bone marrow frown.
A frown he wasn't sure would ever change to a smile again.
XX
The lights, lit by the new electrics, shone down on the dance floor. The dancers, in unison circled that floor. The dance was a waltz. Not the new variations on the waltz like the hesitation waltz or the dream waltz, invented and popularized by the Castles, but the Viennese that demanded a formal distance between the partners.
Distance Matthew found a chasm in his need to touch Mary.
For he could now touch her. She was… he swallowed to not get too far ahead of himself…almost… his fiancée.
But because of Sybil's coming out. Because of the London Season, he had authorization to touch her. On the dance floor. Where it was permissible for a young man to take a girl's hand and touch. Interact. Talk. In private.
Intimate.
Yet even so, Matthew longed to leave. The Flintshire ball tried his nerves. Some of the other parties in the London season allowed for the new American dances. The Bunny Hug and the Lame Duck with their face to face time and the deep dip at the end.
He longed to dip Mary on the dance floor. Her long back arching in his arms. Catching her. Bringing her back and feeling her breath on his face.
Perhaps even attempt the Tango.
The endless series of parties, galas, and balls he lost count. They had been introduced as the heir to the Grantham estate Matthew Crawley Esq. and the Lady Mary Crawley. The assumption of an engagement made by all.
He had asked the question over a late night impromptu wine and sandwiches after Sybil's run in with some hooligans. They had a lot to thank Sybil for.
"Oh Matthew, what am I always telling you. You must pay no attention to the things I say." Her gaze on his. He had kissed her, or she had kissed him. Or they had come together in a perfect moment of shared love. Shared need.
He whispered, "I think I need to be sure of one thing." He paused. She looked expectant.
"That you will pay attention to the next thing I say." He started to stumble and stopped.
"And what is that?" She asked calmly even though her insides were doing somersaults.
"That I want to marry you. That I think we should spend all the days of our lives together." He looked up, into her eyes. "Mary my darling, will you marry me?"
She had kissed him rather than answer. He knew better than to expect an immediate answer. Even though this was what he had been brought to Downton to accomplish. Two years in the making and Mary still wanted him to wait a bit.
He could wait. He had swallowed his fragile pride and said he would wait. They kissed again.
Even so, a month later the question had yet to be answered.
But Matthew was hoping. Mary gave him no need to worry. Indeed since the kiss after his unexpected proposal, their closeness, their intimacy excited him beyond anything he thought possible.
He remembered that she was gowned in the new fashion at that last party. She had dared because the Countess Gracemere allowed for it. Oriental with soft drapery, and bold prints, corsetless she taunted him. Teased him. Beguiled him.
They met in secret while in public.
Stealing away for a few seconds behind a pillar. Outside on the balcony. Sneaking into a library or a music room. To gossip. To kiss. To embrace.
To simply exist in the other's space. When she walked through the French doors to the their secret place, he smiled.
He smiled a smile he didn't think would ever turn to a frown.
XX
Mary was frustrated beyond measure. Frustrated because of her sex. Because of her position in society.
Because she did not feel adequately knowledgeable about world events that found young men from her set going off to fight a war in France for the ludicrously male reason it might be all over by spring.
Or get yourself killed, she thought bitterly. Only she didn't want to think those thoughts.
One day it all been Ireland and Home Rule and the potential for civil conflict.
Now one bullet, the death of an heir to a throne, and political and strategic and jingoistic machinations all lead to the disintegration of the life she had known.
And Matthew had left her to join up. How he thought this was something she would be proud of was beyond her.
Yes Matthew, she would mutter bitterly to herself. Go get yourself killed on some foreign battlefield. Of course that's what I want.
They were supposed to be together. Forever. And that required that he live. That they lived happily ever after.
For she had said yes.
After the balls. After her stay with Rosamund, she had answered his question.
She had said yes. Eventually, and in secret to be sure, but she had said yes to him.
They had the entire London season to get to know each other more intimately.
He had loved how she would whisper instructions for secret rendezvous.
She wanted him to love it.
She had noticed his boredom during the doldrums of the mid-Season. And she wanted to rebuild some of the exciting momentum. She had whispered, "midnight in the sun room" as he had whisked her around the floor before he had been snatched away by Lady Flintshire herself for another of the sedate waltzes that so grated his nerves.
He had been prompt.
Had dashed in right as the clock struck. She was in the shadows.
He knew she was there.
Their lips met in a kiss, fierce and searing. Intense in its quickness. Hard and needy. That was the game. To give each other a taste of delights to come. To tempt societal reprimand to satiate their desire.
To see if they were indeed right for each other.
"You are so beautiful this evening." He felt along her back. He could feel her spinal column. He could feel the natural curve of her waist. He stopped before his hands roamed too far down.
That was agony. He wanted to feel her. All of her. Her skin against his skin.
For that she needed to say yes. Once she said yes, then the wedding. Then all things would be permitted.
Matthew was sure. He believed Mary was also.
She wanted to say yes then. In the privacy. In their intimacy. But she made him wait.
He returned to Downton. She stayed in London.
Rosamund told her bluntly you always want the man more in love with you than you with him. That will keep you in good stead all your life.
Mary knew she wanted more than that. Deserved more than that.
Yet she was as practical as Rosamund. She had to be in her position.
Indeed if Mary asked her more practical self why she said yes, she would admit it was because she wasn't getting any younger. As Rosamund reminded her. As she reminded herself.
And she did love Matthew. He was clever. They got on well together. Despite her personality to never do what was expected of her, she loved him.
She respected that he was not quick to anger at her delay.
Matthew had kept his own counsel during Mary's extended time in London.
He allowed her to wait. While others might have forced an answer from her, he waited.
It made the acceptance that much sweeter. She had said yes under their tree.
He had begun to crack. "Do you love me enough?" He had asked. With agony written on his face. She had taken his stoic silence for granted. Until now.
"Do you not want to be married to someone who'll be a lawyer much longer than he'll ever be an earl?" He was the heir to be sure. But it would be a long wait. And she could have a prince or a duke instead.
But she wanted him. "Yes, Matthew, yes. I want to marry you." The words sang and silenced his doubts.
His voice cracked "my darling, my darling." They kissed in the shade and shelter of the tree. "I must go ask your father now...I .. I really should have done it before but I wasn't able to put voice to your delay. But now..." and he kissed her hand, "now..."
But she stopped him. "Let's wait to tell them. Let's keep it a secret for just a bit longer."
Matthew, confused but too happy to deny her anything, agreed.
Then a few days later came the garden party. And the war announcement.
And again she asked him to keep it a secret. It would now look like they impulsively decided to marry because of the war. Mary said they'd wait until she could tell her parents properly.
It would be for the best.
Doubts seeped into his soul again.
She knew those doubts only when he joined up. He had come to Downton and announced he had joined the Duke of Manchester's Own and he was to report to Sandhurst for officer training. That very evening he was to leave.
She saw him to the door. "Why?" She had wanted to scream at him. To beat her fists against his chest. "Why?"
Instead she stood silent. Her face implacably in place. He would not see her weep.
He kissed her cheek. In front of her parents, on his way out the door, it would be inadvisable to do more. And even that might be seen as an affront. He did it anyway. Soft. Quick. His lips leaving her cheek warm and flushed. He whispered, "This will give you time, my darling." Time to be sure. "I will never divulge our secret until you are ready."
Unspoken was Matthew's thought that in case anything happened to him, she would never be considered any kind of war widow.
Her hand gripped his arm. They stood, locked in each other's eyes for just a moment more.
And then he was gone.
And now she was alone.
XX
Again...we have a loooong way to go in this story. Please take this journey with me! Thanks. (oh and PS: no Pamuk in this story... it's going in a completely different direction)