Title: Wardian Case
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Word Count: 572 words
Characters: Edith Crawley
Summary: Everyone had their roses, but Edith had her ferns. (Spoilers for Episode 2.01)
Notes: Written for penumbra's prompt (Edith Crawley - For deadly secrets strike when understood / and lucky stars all exit on the run: / never try to knock on rotten wood, / never try to know more than you should) at the Downton Abbey Comment Fic-A-Thon.
Sybil has causes and Mary, well Mary has (nearly) everything. Edith knows, however, that beauty fades and passion dies out. She develops a hobby instead. Mama suggests gardening - "a perfectly acceptable pursuit for a woman of her standing" - but while a gift of flowers is always graciously received, biting remarks from Granny under the guise of guidance is assuredly not.
She asks Anna to fetch her a small jar, thinks it can't possibly be that difficult to try her hand at this. Pharaoh, after all, has never suffered under her care and as a matter of fact, rather adores her.
Edith finds fern and moss, sets them under glass and on her windowsill. It is winter and she waits for them to grow.
Edith puts her faith in knowledge, in the permanence and bartering of words. She is quick to grasp onto those most powerful, keeps them in, sealed tight, waits for just the right moment to let them slide out, innocent - and on occasion, not so - as you please. (She's quite aware that she's not always the most tactful, takes after Granny in that respect.) She doesn't impress Matthew with her admiration for churches, but finds herself dealt with a much better hand with the circumstances of Mr. Pamuk's demise.
She'd liken herself to a pawn reveling in its promotion to queen, if she still played chess. (To be truthful, she never found the game itself terribly exciting, had only developed an interest and passable skill for the sake of Patrick's company, his warm smiles and gentle praise.) Her heart twinges at the remembrance but things are different now; she need not change to shine in someone's eyes.
Her plants outgrow their small confines and so she sets them carefully in a larger display, ornate stand and everything. Granny claims it is "ridiculously primordial and certainly not a garden," but Edith considers it the middle of a beginning.
Edith's flaw, she hates to admit, is emphasis on the details: she is eager to latch onto compliments and promise, to suspicious whispers and damaging secrets, forgetting the greater (and graver) consequence of actions carried out to their end. (It could be said, quite simply, that she is too often invested in the means.) The lesson's painfully learned when Sir Anthony Strallan withdraws his proposal and she already knows no snide remark can remedy an ache of dwelling on might have beens.
Mama compliments her on the elegance of her forest in miniature, orders it to be moved from her room to a position of prominence just days before the garden party. It is, Edith concedes, a rather hollow victory.
The letter from the Drakes arrives at breakfast and she finds it much too hard to breathe, wishes that for once there were too few words she wished to say and entirely too many sympathetic ears. (The reality is painfully the reverse.) But there's only Papa and Mary at the table, and she can't find any reason to possibly confide in either. She searches, though, oh how she searches.
The servants carry her glass case from the hall to make way for the arriving soldiers, and in the rush of change she neglects to instruct that it be placed in shade. Her tender charges wilt and burn in so much heat, but Edith - poor Edith - prays for just a moment longer under the sun.