I apologise for this. It just kinda...happened. Reviews & feedback always welcome.
Disclaimer: still not mine, however much I try.
He always thought that he would be the first to leave. He never dreamed he would outlive her, that he would be left on his own to preside over Downton alone, without her by his side. It was his worst nightmare, and it was happening.
The two of them had spent years together in a number of capacities; butler and housekeeper, friends and most recently, husband and wife. They had spent the majority of their free time planning their retirement, joking about where they would live or how they would spend their days. All of that seemed futile now; their plans meant nothing now that she was not there to seem them through with him.
He had first noticed her decline in health a little less than three years before she passed away. She had begun to forget things; simple things at first, like misplacing a key or forgetting where she'd placed pens and other insignificant items. Then she started forgetting bigger things; linen books were not filled in, names of younger maids were forgotten.
He was grateful, he supposed, that she never forgot him. He was her constant, the one she always remembered, relied upon. He was her life, especially towards the end, and he knew that. The first morning that she woke up asking where she was broke his heart; he knew he was losing her and he knew that, no matter how good the doctor or how much money they pumped into the healthcare system, nothing and no one would be able to make her better.
It was from this moment that Charles began to let go, began to say goodbye. Each day became more of a struggle, and work became his escape. She had, after much persuasion, handed her duties over to Anna and hung up her keys for the last time. She spent her days roaming the grounds or cleaning the cottage that the family had given to them upon their marriage, and her evenings were filled with reliving her past with Charles, relaying to him over and over again stories of her teenage years and the moments between the two of them that she could recall as clearly as if they had happened only hours before.
Strands of silver began to mar her hair, telling Charles only too clearly that she was not getting any younger, that her state of mind would not get any better. Yet, watching her clean the dishes with the warm glow of evening sunshine dancing upon her pale skin and soft hair, he knew that he had never seen her look so beautiful and that this would be the image of her he remembered long after she was gone.
He nursed her through her darker times, kept vigils by her bedside when things looked set for the worst. But, ever the fighter, Elsie clung on, battling through as illness after illness struck her and her body's ability to fight them slowly decreased. Eventually, it was pneumonia that overpowered her. She had started to look better, she was even able to sit up and read and for a while, Charles was able to catch glimpses of the old Elsie, his Elsie, shining through.
The morning she died, it rained. It rained continuously for two weeks afterwards. Charles often likes to pretend that it was the tears of those whose lives Elsie had touched during her lifetime, falling down from heaven. In reality though, he knew that it was just an act of nature, however poetically he chose to interpret it. He could hear her, every time his thoughts wandered back to this, berating him or laughing at him for being such a 'silly old fool', as she used to call him. He could see her sometimes, picking flowers from the end of the garden or rearranging the cupboards in the kitchen just to keep him on his toes. But he would always reach the end of the garden and find nothing but the tulips she had planted and the wilting rosebushes that she had long pestered him to do something about; he would always go to the cupboards to find everything exactly as it had been before, arranged just as she had left it the last time she changed the layout.
She was nothing more than an illusion now, an image his mind conjured up whenever he felt lonely or whenever he missed her. The bright blue eyes he woke up to every morning were not really there; the smell he caught as he rested his head on her pillow was not her; the soft singing he heard last thing at night was not real. Grief acted in mysterious and sometimes rather cruel ways, he concluded.
And slowly, he began his life without her. It seemed easy at first, almost too easy. He managed fine until his birthday, then hers, their anniversary, Christmas and the servants' ball. Slowly, his façade began to crumble and it was with a heavy heart that he admitted that he was unable to live without her.
His emotions started to interfere with his work and, in order to save the poor man's dignity, Lord Grantham gently suggested that it was perhaps time that Charles left service, that he should spent the last of his days relaxing, looking after himself rather than catering for a family who, in reality, had no place for a slightly 'past it', grieving butler.
It wasn't long after leaving Downton Abbey that Charles' health deteriorated. He suffered heart attacks, one after the other and, eventually, he begged to be put out of his misery and reunited once more with his Elsie.
His wish did not take long to be granted. It was mere weeks following his second heart attack that his third – and final – attack weakened his body enough for him to be able to concede defeat. In his last moments, knowing that he would soon be united once more with his love, a long-forgotten smile settled upon his features and he opened his arms, ready to embrace the woman that he knew would be waiting for him.