A/N: These are extremely unoriginal, but I enjoy spending more time in the scenes, so I share them with you all.
He had always feared the day Anna found out about his past. When he had looked over at her after his confession, he expected to see disappointment or possibly disgust. She looked confused and wouldn't meet his eye. He wasn't sure what to make of it.
As he stood out in the courtyard pondering his immanent dismissal, he'd been half-expecting, half-dreading her coming out to talk for a while. He braced himself as she came over to him.
"Will you really leave?"she asked. That was not the question he was expecting. Perhaps he should have. She had stuck with him this long, despite his refusals to reveal or explain his secrets. He knew most women would have given him up long before, but Anna was, among many other lovely things, tenacious.
The last thing Bates wanted was to be forced to leave Downton, but he had to accept the obvious. There was no way Lord Grantham was going to let him stay. They both needed to accept it. "I doubt His Lordship wants a thief in the house," he said with a little smile of self-depreciation. She just stood there watching him.
For a long time now, the selfish and unselfish sides of his love for her kept him vacillating between him wanting her to go find the good man she deserved and wanting her by his side always. Knowing he was doomed to leave gave his unselfish side the inducement it needed to push her away. "Go to sleep, and dream of a better man."
She rejected the idea immediately. "I can't—" she said with some despair and a shake of her head that ruthlessly denied the possibility. She finished with absolute conviction, "—because there isn't one."
Bates was floored. That was not how he was expecting that sentence to end. Her faith in him staggered him. There was nothing he could say in answer. This unshakable belief in him was something he had never experienced before and as his heart overflowed in appreciation he reached down and took her hand. Their gazes locked and something shifted between them. He looked back down at their hands. This touch wasn't enough for everything he was trying to express.
When they looked back up, he wasn't sure who moved first, he just found himself leaning in to kiss her as she was leaning toward him. Startled by the sound of the door opening and the rattle of bottles, he looked around with vast irritation at the interruption. Looking quickly down at Anna he saw her realize what they were doing and how much trouble they could get in for it, and he knew the moment was past reclamation. It was probably for the best. Their mutual loss of control for that moment was dangerous for both of them. As she quickly turned and left, he was filled with a sense of loss, both of that moment and the coming loss of her from his life when he would be forced to leave.