A/N: So… I have this bad, bad feeling concerning the direction the Christmas Special might take, considering sir Richard's character and oh-so-many-other-things that might go wrong. And so, I need to get it out of my system, before I suffocate on my own thoughts. (Yes, I do believe it possible.)

I would like to use this chance to tell you—it shall not be pretty, at least not for a while: but if you do venture over hear and take some time to read my delirious scribblings, I'd be delighted to get some feedback from you. Thank you in advance!

He was asleep for six months. Or so it seemed.

There was a void inside him, a dark an empty place, that consumed him almost entirely, leaving only a small percentage of his mind free to keep his body functional, to get through the days as they passed him by—to pretend that he was still alive.

He was a snail, or a turtle, with a cracked shell. A bird with broken wings. A cat with its whiskers and claws torn out.

It took him half a year to start healing.

When he woke up, really woke up, for the first time since that cold, weary March day, he was surprised to see that the trees were already turning yellow, that his mother had more silver threaded in her hair than he remembered, and that his world had become a cold, empty and hostile place.

His mother confirmed that part of what he felt was true—the big house stood proudly as it used to, but it too resembled an animal now: an abandoned shell of some sea creature rather than a human dwelling. Something unspoken hung in the air between Cousin Cora and her husband, making the rest of the family (and the servants) moody and tense. It might have been the case of Bates' arrest, but not necessarily. There was no reason to organize dinner parties anymore, not after two of the three sisters have left the house, so Isobel rarely got a chance to see Lord and Lady Grantham nowadays.

The fact that his own mental state might have been a factor contributing to the lack of invitations had not been mentioned.

He asked about his younger cousins, his hands closing into fists on their own accord. His mother kept her eyes on her knitting as she answered, her voice flat and even. Sybil was long gone to Dublin, working as a nurse and getting ready to marry that chauffer of hers. Edith stayed at home, drove around, visited some farms, but mainly kept to herself.

Mary was still abroad with her husband, but they were expected to be back soon.

Mary had a husband now.

He knew that, of course; some part of him had, after all, been alive and conscious enough to attend their wedding three mere months ago. If he thought really hard about it, he remembered congratulating her, shaking her hand, and dancing with her at the reception, all without looking her in the eye, not even once. She was cold, and numb, more like a statue than an actual breathing person, like the Andromeda she'd always been, now encased in white marble.

Or so it seemed.

He went to the office that day, and really looked at the work he'd done during the months of his inner confinement. It felt good to have something to do; some cases concerned the estate, but most didn't, and the feeling of being detached from that part of his life grew with every hour he spent not thinking about it.

In the evening, he dined with his mother, sipped on some wine and went to bed earlier than usual.

He dreamt of cool skin and toneless voices.

He didn't dare call it his new life yet, not out loud, but he thought of it as such.

A life of cold resignation, of work that had to be done and duties that had to be addressed when the time came. A life inside a shell.

Something told him it wouldn't last long.

"Please come," Edith said, finally raising her eyes to meet his. It was a week since he woke up, and the first time he saw her, really saw her, since March. "I'd appreciate a friendly soul at the table."

"Then you should perhaps invite somebody more fitting the company than myself," he remarked dryly, pushing papers around on his desk. She didn't seem eager to pick up the topic.

"Come at eight, if you can," she said instead, standing up and holding out her gloved hand. He squeezed it briefly, glad it wasn't bare skin that he touched. "And give my best to Cousin Isobel. I actually miss having her around to boss me. It gave me some purpose."

"Should I tell her you said that?"

"Oh, no. Sometimes you find that simply missing something and thinking fondly about the time you'd had it feels better than actually having it back—I'm afraid this might just be the case. Until then, Cousin Matthew."

He frowned, wondering if there was a hidden meaning behind her words, but dropped the thought quickly, dismissing it as utterly absurd.

"Cousin Edith came to see me at the office today. We have been invited to dine at Downton this coming Saturday," he told his mother at dinner. She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

A small bite of meat and a sip of wine preceded his carefully measures answer. "The Carlisles have come back from their tour of the continent."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Apparently everyone up there is eager to listen to their stories, and let them rub it in on those less fortunate."

"Matthew!"

"I'm sorry, Mother." Another sip of wine. "I may not be fair in my assumption."

"You may not?"

He let it slip, bowing his head slightly in acknowledgement. "I shall try not to say anything too obtrusive while we're there."

"Please see that you do." Isobel pressed her fingertips to a hollow at her temple, and closed her eyes for a moment. "She won't need any additional burdens on her shoulders, especially not from you."

He did not need her to clarify that last remark. Especially since he disagreed, not seeing how anything he did could possibly affect her now.

After more than a week of numb indifference to the world and its inhabitants, he expected the visit to Downton to bring on some unwanted feelings, which it did.

Only the feelings he actually felt weren't the ones he'd anticipated.

First of all, he had no idea his mother could still astonish him to the point of rendering him speechless.

Isobel walked into the room where everybody had already gathered, took one look at the Carlisles—sir Richard standing proudly right next to his wife, his left hand placed possessively at the small of her back—and crossed the distance between them and the door, a blinding smile on her face.

"Mary, dear, you look splendid!" she exclaimed, taking Mary's hand in hers and leaning in for a fleeting kiss.

The lie was so apparent, so shameless, that the sheer force of it stopped Matthew dead in his tracks.

Mary's face was white as a sheet, her body much thinner than he remembered; her lips, pressed into a tight line, seemed drained of all colour. Although the evening was a relatively warm one, she had a thick shawl draped over her upper arms and shoulders. Her outfit made Matthew think somebody in sir Richard's family must have died, and she was in mourning (although her husband was not), for she wore all black: the dress, simpler and much less revealing than anything she might have worn before her marriage; the long, silk gloves; the choker wound tightly around her neck adorned with black pearls.

"Cousin Isobel," she said in response to the warm greeting, trying to make her voice sound cheerful and light. It came out raspy and broken, and Matthew felt a chill run down his back.

His mother now touched Mary's elbow, pulled her into a half embrace. Over her shoulder, Matthew saw Mary's face contort briefly into an image of agonizing pain—he blinked at the sight, and it was gone, so fast he thought he'd imagined it, and quickly dismissed all possible implications.

They went through to the dining room and sat, him across from Mary, who had taken Sybil's old place closer to the foot of the table, her husband further up, next to his father-in-law. Edith was seated to Mary's left, as if they were both still unmarried; to her right stood an empty chair upon which Sybil would probably sit if she was there.

The conversation was quickly dominated by sir Richard, conveying with great flourish the sights they'd seen and the events they'd taken part in while cruising Europe. Mary was eerily quiet, offering short, clipped answers to Edith's occasional questions, barely touching her food and sitting stiffly in her chair. Matthew decided she must have grown even colder and prouder since she married, and did his best to ignore his eldest cousin.

It worked rather well—until the second course, when some remark of sir Richard's, spoken in a louder and more aggressive a tone than the one adopted by the whole party, caused Mary to flinch and drop her knife.

She made an attempt to bend over and retrieve it, and gave out a whimper that caused Matthew's blood to freeze.

He was up from his chair and on his knees next to the table before he even realized he'd moved. Waving away Carson, who was already rushing to the rescue, he picked up the offending piece of cutlery, and looked up at Mary to hand it back to her.

Her right hand sneaked down under the tablecloth, and pulled at the dress, causing the hem to go up an inch or two. Matthew caught a brief glance of her ankle, encased in a light stocking.

What he saw was more than enough to heat his blood back up.

Mary thanked him with a delicate nod, and turned to accept a new knife from Carson, thus angling her neck to the left, away from Matthew. As she did that, his eyes fell on a piece of skin exposed by a small movement of the elaborate choker, and he finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

He stood back up, and gave the dirty knife to the butler. No more than two heartbeats have passed since it was dropped, and the world was suddenly a completely different place.

"You should be more careful, Cousin Mary," he remarked in a light tone, going back to sit in his chair. Sir Richard, who didn't make any attempt to rush to his wife's rescue, chuckled humourlessly and took a large gulp of his wine.

"That she should. She can be really clumsy sometimes, isn't that right, dear?"

"Of course," Mary answered sweetly, like a gentle wife would, giving her family a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

Matthew looked around the table over the rim of his glass. Aside from questioning glances from Edith and his mother, and disapproving ones from Cousin Cora and Cousin Violet, no one seemed to have paid the occurrence much attention.

Which meant, Matthew realized in a moment of terrifying clarity, that he was the only person in this room other than the Carlisles aware of the fact that, from what he'd observed while kneeling on the floor at Mary's feet, his cousin's body was practically covered with bruises.

The bruises which weren't, most likely, the result of Mary's clumsiness.

Matthew looked at her again, really looked—and for the first time since they danced to a music from a show that flopped, he felt something else for her than grief-fuelled hatred.

There was a man in this room who had married her, and bedded her, and still chose to ignore her whimpers of pain—because he was well aware that whatever physical discomfort she felt was the result of his own actions.

And Mary, the woman Matthew had always known as strong, brave, proud and daring, was too afraid of him to ask anyone for help, aside from hoping that Matthew would catch on to what was going on by simply looking at her, and seeing her for who she has become.

There it was again, he thought bitterly, the whole act: the princess, the sea monster, and the hero.

He had no idea what happened, what caused Mary to change, in a span of a few short months, to a completely different person, to throw all her dignity away. There was but one thing clear to him: if he really saw what he did, he had to take a stand and play his part in this drama: to whatever end.

TBC…