For Antoinette. And also Brooke. Happy Femslash February.
Disclaimer: If I owned Upstairs, Downstairs, the canon storyline would have happened very differently from the way it did.
"Men," Agnes declared, loudly and to no one in particular, as she burst into the room, "are pointless!"
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Pritchard," she added, hastily, upon seeing the butler, "I didn't mean you."
Blanche struggled to contain her laughter as Mr. Pritchard assured Agnes that it was quite alright, your ladyship, and, rather hurriedly, took his leave of the room.
"I can't say I'm inclined to disagree with you there," she spluttered, as soon as the door was safely closed behind him.
"I've just seen Hallam," Agnes explained, apologetically, as she moved to sit beside her on the sofa, seemingly embarrassed by her uncharacteristic outburst, and though she had known it was coming, it made Blanche's heart sink, just a little, but still a damned sight more than it had any right to do, to hear her say it aloud, and she longed to reach for Agnes's hand, take her in her arms, tell her to forget she had ever known her nephew, but she couldn't do that; all she could do was say "What's he done now?", and so that was what she did, though she felt sure she might die if she had to listen to the answer.
"Oh, nothing, really."
Agnes looked away, evidently trying to hide the fact that she was blinking back tears. Poor Agnes. She wasn't made for deception. Which was what had made her sister's disposition so very hard to take. There was no darkness in Agnes; she had a purer soul than Blanche could have thought possible in anyone, but if there had ever been any light in Persie, then she certainly hadn't been privy to it.
"If that is the case," she told her, not unkindly, though she wished the younger woman wouldn't insist on being such a bloody martyr all the time, because it didn't do anyone any good, least of all her, "then I see no reason for you to decry the existence of half the world's population."
Agnes sighed, and as she did, the words seemed to spill from her mouth, as though releasing her pain into the atmosphere, along with the carbon monoxide.
"He is under the illusion that the fact of its being today makes me somehow indebted to be reconciled with him."
Her voice broke, almost imperceptibly, on the last word.
"My nephew is a fool," Blanche soothed, laying a sympathetic hand on Agnes's arm, "but he cares for you very much, you know," she felt obligated to say. Morally obliged to break her own heart in two, because that was what would be best for everybody else. Conversely, though, her words seemed merely to upset Agnes even more, and she was crying openly now, covering her face with her hand.
"That's just it, you see," she choked, her anguished enunciations almost enough to reduce Blanche to tears, too, "I'm sure Hallam does care for me, at least a little, because why on earth should he bother otherwise? He cares for me, and you care for me, and the servants care for me, and our friends care for me, and I know Persie cared for me, too, in her way. Plenty of people care for me; far more people than I deserve, probably, but, oh, Blanche is it so very wrong of me to wish that a single person might love me?"
Unable to believe this, Blanche shook her head, as if to try to arrange the jumbled mess of her thoughts into a coherent response.
"Agnes," she began, "You are one of the best loved women ever to-"
"No!" Agnes interrupted, shaking her head, violently, "No, it's not true; and if Hallam did love me, it was not in any palatable way, because if he had loved me as I loved him, he would never have been able to...to..."
She broke off, her sobs overpowering her, and Blanche pulled her into a tight embrace, but said nothing further, realising that Agnes needed to be allowed to express her feelings, however misguided they might be, in order to ever be free of them.
"Tell me, Blanche," Agnes mumbled against her shoulder, after a minute or so, "am I so fundamentally unlovable?"
"No, Agnes," Blanche whispered, her throat suddenly very dry, wondering if anyone else would ever know the truth of her words so deeply as she did in that moment, "you aren't."
Eventually, the sobs subsided, and still they sat there, clinging to one another, as if either one might collapse without the other's support.
"I took a bus home today, you know," Agnes announced. It wasn't a segue Blanche had ever heard before, but Agnes might well be going somewhere useful with it, and she was more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"I haven't ever been on a bus before. I've never had any reason to catch one. But I took one today, I sent Harry Spargo back here by himself, and I got on the number eight bus, because it would have upset Hallam terribly. He told me he loved me, today, and three months ago, perhaps even two, I would have believed him, and I'd probably have taken him back, too. But not now, not after all this time; all these lies. I've been scared to love, and scared to confess it, because I'm so caught in this web of deceit, and what if talking about my own love only entangles me even further? But I can't bear it anymore; I can't bear to suffer for their love any longer, because I have got my own, and I have got my own life as well. I don't owe Hallam anything anymore; I don't have to stop myself from doing things he wouldn't like, so I took the bus, because I knew he would have hated it, and now that I'm here, telling you all of this, it all...well, it all sounds so silly."
Agnes's speech, which had seemed to come from nowhere, now ended as abruptly as it had begun, as if she had simply walked by and upended Blanche's whole life on her way, without so much as a second glance. She would have given anything to have known what the right thing was to say in this situation, but it was all she could do to choke out: "Agnes, what...what exactly do you mean by all of this?"
Slowly, Agnes raised her head, fixing the older woman with a steady gaze, and if Blanche hadn't known better, she might have thought that her expression was loaded. The air between them seemed to have changed, as though they were somehow bound together in a way they hadn't been before; intangible, but irrevocable, too. A beat passed, and still, Agnes was silent, a wayward strand of hair hanging loose across her forehead, and Blanche felt her hand rise, automatically, to smooth it back behind her ear. Agnes closed her eyes, and drew a shaky breath, Blanche's hand still cupping her face.
"I'm not entirely sure what I mean," she admitted, finally, as she opened them again, "but I think it's something...something along the the lines of this."
And then Agnes was kissing her, and whatever she had been going to say; whatever she meant by it, didn't seem to matter, anymore.
"I think what I mean is," Agnes murmured, pulling Blanche closer, "Happy Valentine's Day."