When he was young, Thomas Barrow imagined that his life would be one of grandeur and adventure. He would play the leading man, alluring and dashing yet aloof, like those men that graced the covers of his novels or flashed across the screen at the pictures, always one step ahead and never looking back. However, in all his daydreaming, not once had he thought that his would be a redemption story, that he would be a man humbled and nearly broken. Therefore, after the ordeal with Jimmy over the past year and the fight under the bridge, Thomas found himself re-evaluating who he was.
Each morning he rose, in the same small room in the servants' quarters that he had occupied for going on ten years, and stared in the small mirror on the wall above his dressing table. He studied his face in the weak morning light, noting the small changes that had crept upon his countenance so slowly that he failed to recognise them until they had become firmly established. He was still handsome, even dishevelled from yet another night of disturbed sleep. Piercing grey eyes, ever alert, gazed out from under the dark hair falling across clear alabaster skin. These were the same features that he had used to his advantage for the majority of his life, but now, when he looked carefully, he could see the faint lines marking his forehead and the corner of his eyes. And when his self-awareness slipped, as it was more frequently wont to do, he noticed a slight slump in his shoulders and weariness in his eyes that had not been present previously.
In truth, when he cared to acknowledge it, he felt tired – from maintaining a constant guard and keeping people at arms' length, from ignoring pointed looks and whispers as he passed, from trying to prove that he was not a monster and, mostly, from loving Jimmy. Still. Always.
It was like his love for Jimmy had changed from a feeling into something physical. At first it was wispy and ethereal , floating gaily around Thomas's head like a halo. After all, to him, Jimmy seemed an angel, golden and beautiful. But then, after that night, the love congealed into a lump that sat resolutely in the pit of Thomas's stomach, refusing to uncoil and free him from its grasp. And even now, after so much time had passed, Thomas carried around his love for Jimmy like shackles on his wrists and ankles. He wasn't able to escape it, to take it off like he did his uniform at the end of the day; instead, it was with him always, present in every action and thought, hindering him and making him feel constantly wrong-footed and ungainly. Thomas didn't like thinking that way about anything related to Jimmy, as he still shone bright, but there it was. His love for Jimmy clung to him and it was becoming impossible to bear.
Thomas rubbed his eyes roughly and pushed back the shock of black hair. It had grown longer than he usually kept it and he thought idly that he should go to be barber in Ripon on his next half-day. He probably wouldn't go in the end, being too busy keeping his head down and plodding away with his work. Things like the latest fashions in hairstyles had become too tedious for Thomas to consider for any great length of time. With a final glance in the mirror, Thomas turned abruptly to his wardrobe and began to dress. The process had become automatic to him and within minutes he was kitted out and back in front of the dressing table, slicking his hair back into its standard coiffure.
It was a day like any other over the past weeks and months, routine. He could do this, just as he had since he started in service. Order and discipline. Thomas stood before his door, forced his shoulders back and his chin up before wrenching open the door and stepping out into the corridor. With footsteps echoing in the stairwell, he emerged the servants' hall, still quiet, and took his seat at the empty table. He took out a well-worn copy of Tarzan of the Apes from his breast pocket and immersed himself in the story until the time he was forced back to the reality of Downton.