Part III

In the sitting room of Crawley House, the chasing and roughhousing of teenagers had stopped. The 'guests' were now giving a second or third look at the items inside. A couple of teenage boys proclaimed that the eyes of General George Washington, crossing the Delaware, followed them wherever they stood in the room. Others were admiring the framed flag of the premiere chapterhouse of the Ku Klux Klan. The very original banner of one of the oldest chapters of the KKK was the prize of the paramilitary organization. It had flown ever in pride over their rituals and parades down many city streets for nearly hundred years. Now, it sat in the sitting room of an English country house as a trophy of the only person who had ever openly stood up, outwitted, battled, and defeated the oldest order of the Ku Klux Klan, on their home turf none the less.

A letter, written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, and signed by Twenty-Eight Democratic Congressmen in Washington DC, had been sent to Downton Abbey. The content of such letter had denounced the idea of the pride of a Democratic Party Institution reduced to some trophy hanging in an outlaw's study in a foreign land. They angrily demanded that the young rebel return their prized and vaulted symbol of culture and heritage. But when Lord Grantham placed the presidential letter into his Grandson's hand, while the rest of the family looked on with great interest while at tea, the boy only skimmed it quietly. Then, crumbling it up without a whim, he chucked it into the Downton Library's fireplace to his family's raised eyebrows at the action to a signed letter from the American President. But George only, languidly, paced out of the library without saying a word to anyone. Afterward they heard that George had the flag framed.

But for Marigold, the girl had her hands behind her back, admiring the room that she had missed so much. It was unfathomable just how many adventures George, Sybbie, and herself had in this room, in this house, always dreaming of being somewhere else. Now, the young man of her dreams for eight long years had returned with such interesting treasures that they had only dreamed of in their childhood. There was a globe sized pearl, Atlantean War Helm, and a mysterious treasure map. Yet, there was still something missing that truly made the house home...

And that was Marigold, herself.

She still bore the wound from that snowy night in Downtown Fort Worth. She could still see him there on the city sidewalk, leaning against the street clock by the jewelry store, listening to the homeless string band play so sweetly. The storefront Christmas lights shadowed his bundled figure in the cold. And when he turned, seeing her in her velvet cloak and silk evening gown, shimmering in the cornucopia multicolored lights from the Holiday displays, she wanted to die. Fore, in that moment, when he saw her in the light, scored to the perfect music, he looked to be in heaven. But she knew that she had come to break his heart, as hers was already shattered.

It was a certainty that came from the close calls when her Aunt Edith and George had gone into Mexico to save their Uncle Tom. In the many brushes with death by George's side on the adventure that Lady Edith found that it was time to tell Marigold the truth, the real truth of her paternity. Her poor mama, she thought that telling the girl the truth would make her happy. Instead, she had crushed her beyond repair. When Marigold closed her eyes, she could still hear the young man she dreamed of all of her life, desperately trying to get her to run away with him, get lost somewhere outside of San Antonio. No one would know. They could be happy in this little spot by the river that he had picked out for them. But it was one more dream of theirs that would never come true, not for them, not now that they were …

Even now she couldn't bring herself to say it.

Even for people of George's status in the Gentry, they drew the line at Second Cousins, and only if the Estate was somehow in trouble. But now they had no chance, no future. So here she was standing in a house that she thought would be theirs someday. But there would never be a someday for the two of them, no matter how much they didn't want it to be true. Their family didn't know, could never know, what it was that broke her heart so. And somehow it only hurt more to know that she could never tell a soul, never fully share her pain. She could never give voice to all of her crushed dreams.

She was not, and could never be, George, forever brooding in the quiet of this place, closing himself off from his family, the world. Marigold loved their family, loved everyone in it. There was nothing she couldn't tell her Aunt … her mama, or Sybbie, or Uncle Tom. But she could only wither away in silence, and try to hide the pain inside herself as the decay killed her slowly in George's absence from her very future. Her Granny told her that whoever it was that hurt her, whoever he might have been, that there would be other boys, other men, in her life that would make her forget. Over these few months, Marigold had tried to live the way other girls her age did. And she's had a great deal of fun.

But yet, in the quiet stillness of a late afternoon, in the dark of the night, she found herself still standing on the snowy downtown street in North Texas. Just for a moment, in the clatter of horse huffs and the flashing lights of passing motors, she could still see George standing at the street corner. A lost young man under the clock outside the jewelry store, in threadbare and ragged clothes, and shadowed in Christmas lights. He watched, brokenly, as the girl he loved all his life left him for the final time. When they would see each other again it would not be, could never be, as what they had always been. The slow falling snow turned to freezing rain that pelted a lone and worn figure that watched the beauty's taxi pull away back to the high class and luxurious "Hotel Texas" where the rest of their family was staying, without George. Through the droplets of the back window she watched a lost and bewildered adventurer standing in a ruined world and life, which, so suddenly, didn't make sense anymore. When the memory always concluded, she found herself sitting in her opulent dressing room at the end of the first act of a performance. Once more she would apologize to Maisie, her make-up artist, who had to reapply her costume's mascara and blush for the single tear that streaked down the ballerina's perfect face.

Even now she felt the old pain of that day standing in the very house she knew she shouldn't have come to. She still remembered the last words George had spoken to her. He had proclaimed that he would wait forever for Marigold, he'd wait till the universe folded on itself, till reality changed. He'd wait forever … and then a decade afterward just to make sure he 'didn't miss it'. She prayed that he wouldn't, but another part of her cherished the very idea of the deathlessness of their dream. That someday, some time, or in some other reality from this one, they'd find each other. They only had forever to search for that perfect tomorrow waiting for them somewhere in the night sky. In the meantime she'd hide him somewhere special in her large heart, somewhere were only she knew. If she'd come to lose everything else in life, she'd know that she would always have George's love.

That she'd have their unbreakable dreams of a life together somewhere in the ether of where the universe ends and Heaven begins.

Quietly, she wiped a single tear away from her milky cheek as she paced to an end table. A sad smirk touched her lips as she observed a greened brass bladed dagger that sat on a table display. It looked old, very ancient. It had hieroglyphic symbols that ran down the duel serpentine twisting metal that made up the blade that was gaped down the middle. Even thousands of years later the meticulously crafted weapon was gorgeous to look upon with an emerald above the handle. Yet, the ballerina's smirk didn't come from the dagger, but from a stack of letters piled next to it. She only shook her head at the Egyptian dagger, the same one used by "The Queen of the Upper Nile" to kill herself when the Pharaoh murdered her lover. It was a tale told by every Egyptology professor to his teenage daughters who they thought were being 'a bit excessive' about a boy they weren't allowed to see. But it seemed, much to George's annoyance, that Sybbie was not only having her mail delivered to his house, but, he also might be a 'wee' bit more upset that she had been using a priceless artifact for opening 'their' mail … again.

She picked up a picture frame that was sitting at the edge of the curving blade's single point. It was a professional photo from a crime scene photographer. In it had been a standing gilded sarcophagus of a young queen of the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. Her depiction was regal and ornate, arms crossed with scepter and religious rod. The carvings and painstaking artisanship to the entombed mummy spoke to this 'sister-wife's' great importance. However, one couldn't help but snort at the parody of such a thing as being a "big deal" in the modern world. For on either side of her were two people that couldn't look less serious. Sybbie and George both had an arm around the Queen's shoulders, posing with playfully star struck faces, pointing dumb founded at the sarcophagus as if she were some Hollywood starlet that agreed to take a picture with two of her biggest fans. Somehow, the mocking comedy was only enhanced by the look of deep loathing of a small man with full hair and large glasses with busted soda pop lenses that were cracked from a punch by a teenage girl. Two 'Bobbies' were lifting him off the floor as he was being carried to a police Wagon filled with his beaten and bruised "associates" from the East End.

For a moment there, the head curator of the Egyptology department at the Metro Museum thought he could replace the real mummy with a replica and sell her for top dollar to the collectors. It was scheme that worked for years, till now. He thought the worst embarrassment the academic and trusted classical historian could face had been being carried into a police vehicle while under arrest. But now he had to go to Scotland Yard Lock Up with the knowledge that a teenage girl, who looked as if she had just walked off the pages of Vogue, had been the one to knock him out. It was one thing to go to prison having taken "The Comet's" best shots. They wore those bruises and scars as a badge of honor in the places he was headed. But he'd be eaten alive if they all found out that it wasn't Crawley, but his partner, the Pin-Up Girl from "Burke's Landed Gentry", who did him in. Now, he could only scowl, watching the pair of damn kids, who ruined him, taking stupid pictures with his once ticket to retirement in the British Bahamas.

Marigold only chuckled under breath at the picture. There was never a better tonic to her poorer moods than the everlasting, ever suffering, keystone friendship of George and Sybbie. Always seeing them together, up to their antics, put a smile on the girl's face. There were never two people that belonged together as much as they should steer clear. They were so often mistaken for Lady Grantham's twins, born to her later in life, that they had just stopped correcting people these days. Both had shared black raven curls and the same cerulean eyes. Both had the same generically similar Lady Cora Crawley inspired face, Sybbie favoring their Granny, and George much more his Aunt Sybil. If it wasn't for George's height, hammering physic, and American Southwestern skin tone, they might have been identical on some winter days. But the twins' comparison didn't just stop at looks. No, not when a normal conversation had between the two could easily turn into a laughing fit as it could a knockdown, drag out, fight over some small thing.

The two argued like sisters, fought like brothers, and snuggled together in sleep like a litter of new born puppies. Marigold couldn't remember the last time she had ever fought with Sybbie. She was her best friend, her big sister, they loved each other completely. But then, there was being 'sisters', and then there was being 'twins' like George and Sybbie. When they fought, they actually fought. They punched, slapped, smacked, and wrestled with one another. There were times when the family had come into the Library for tea to find Sybbie on George's back, arm locked around his neck as he was smashing her against a column. Other times, in the gardens, they watched an annoyed Sybbie motioning for George to get something over with. Then, with a terrific thud, he would wind up and punch the girl in the face. They all watched in horror as Sybbie lay in the grass for a long moment. But, then, when George gave her a hand back to her feet, the girl would pinch her nose a moment, before giving him a thumb up to signal they were 'square'. Then, they'd all watch flabbergasted as they'd toss arms around each other and continue on as if nothing happened. When later pressed at dinner about getting punched in the face, the girl only shrugged, claiming that they had made a bet … and she lost. No one was sure what was more disturbing, the payment style of their bet, or the fact that Sybbie was looking at all of them as if they were the weird ones.

Yet, still, sometimes arriving home from the office, Tom Branson and Lady Mary could find George and Sybbie napping on a couch in the Downton lobby after a victorious caper. George would be stretched out on a cushioned piece of furniture. His outback fedora's brim slouched over his eyes, one boot dangling over the arm rest, the other planted on the rug. His hand absently stroking Sybbie's back as she lay deeply snuggled on top of him, her nose nuzzled into the beaten leather of his old jacket collar, always loving the smell of it. How they ended up there, no one, not even they, could remember. But not a word was spoken to disturb them when Thomas draped a blanket, paternally, over their sleeping figures. Tom only wished Mary would just let go of her self-loathing, guilt, and her ridiculously complicated schemes of stalking George, when he'd see her deeply glassy red tinted dark eyes as she stood watching her children sleep. But, thus, was the contradiction and welded together inseparability of the two siblings.

In truth, one could always tell when George and Sybbie were approaching, because, they were always heralded by argument, laughter, or both.

Marigold was lost in thought, running her thumb over George's face in the frame. The girl had many boyfriends these last few years. In that time she had fun. In fact, some of her most cherished memories had been of this summer, even in her broken heart that was yet to mend. But she knew that the same could not be said of George. He had not moved on, unable to let go, and never would. He had only loved one girl in his life and would grow to forsake all other romantic attachments, seeing no point in them. There were plenty of girls out there in the world that the boy would encounter in his many adventures. Those of surpassing beauty and strikingly exotic, but in the end, they'd all have the same problem …

And that was that they simply weren't Marigold.

But ever in the back of her mind she felt afraid that it was this very reason that he would not stay. Without her in his life or in his future, in the constant battles with Donk and Aunt Mary over an estate he despised almost as much as he hated the 'blessed' Lady Mary, eventually, George would feel that there was nothing keeping him here. For now, he put up with their family, because, Aunt Isobel was so very sick, and he wanted to be near his 'Grams'. But when the end eventually came, she was so terribly afraid that he would leave again. She knew it was selfish of her to be carrying on as she did. With her boyfriend of the month, all the while the man she actually loved brooded ever in the distance of what had been stolen from them in the expulsion of their family's closest guarded secret. But Marigold couldn't help it. She was trying so very hard to move on, to accept that the life she dreamed of was not viable. And yet, she couldn't bear for him to be so far away. The ballerina was unsure she could survive watching him leave her again. That was why she was so glad of all the headlines and funny pictures of George and Sybbie's antics and Cases. It only gave George something to hold onto, so that Marigold had something to hold onto.

But as the lovely young girl cherished the picture, a tall shadow slowly cast darkly over her unsuspecting figure as it approached her from the doorway.

In the Study, Sybbie pondered long and darkly on the things she had come to understand. In her bones were the many tragedies that had formed her and her best friends, siblings really. All of the blood grandchildren of Lord and Lady Grantham were missing a parent. Yet, Sybbie had never really thought of it, nobody had. Lady Mary had always been Sybbie's mama, had always been there for her, no matter what. Uncle Bertie might have been comatose these last six years, after what happened to him in New York, but he was the most loving father to Marigold while he was still in the conscious world. But George had never had a quick or proper replacement fit so neatly as She and Marigold had. Henry had always seemed more of an Uncle to all of them, even George, and as the months passed, they grew more distance than closer before his death. The truth remained that the girls had no idea what it was like to be George in these last ten years, to have no mama or daddy, to feel and be so completely alone for so long. It was something that she couldn't bring herself to think of so casually.

Right on Sybil Afton Branson's heels was a dark and sinful existence in which she did many a terrible thing in pursuit of love and adoration. And in those dark moments, when the satisfaction had slid out to sea after the wave of her much cherished release in carnal pleasure, she had felt so empty. In those sinful nights and weekends after being taken by so many lovers, her one great fear, even lying nakedly between two or three people, wrapped in opulent sheets of silk and naked limbs, was being alone. She was haunted by the prospect that someday her family would cast her out, and she'd have no one. To be alone in the world was a prospect that she couldn't fathom. And it was that great fear that had led her to come to the cusp of taking her own life at the end of those sinful nights. In her darkest moments she pondered the idea of suicide many times, rather than her family finding out all that she had done in many bedrooms of their friends and neighbors. So it was in these memories of such rash desperation and fear that she could contemplate how darkened and burdened George's mind was of late with ancient wounds of heartbreak and tragedy. It was the only thing she could think of as to why he'd attempt a feat such as that to which he was planning with the Grail of Prague.

Suddenly, all of the girl's hair stood on end when she heard such a loud and ear piercing scream echo nearby.

For a long pause, Sybbie was frozen in place at the frightening noise echoing from the dark of the hallway. In her static placement in the middle of the study, something else, maybe just as frightening, had caught her eye. She spotted a glimmer of moonlight which shined through the half stained glass window panes facing the gardens and onto the frame of the old map of the St. Louis Graveyard. No matter how many times she blinked, no matter how hard, her mind could not shake the sight. The silver scars of African runes, which had always seemed barely visible in any light or angle, were now glowing. It was a dimmed crimson that grew brighter and stronger as the moments passed. By the time of the noise of commotion coming from the sitting room, they were practically blazing like ruby flames under the glass. They seemed to be activated by the presence of something old and powerful, so close by, which was tied to one of the three thin sheets that made the map whole.

Something turning over with a crash, snapped the girl out of the trance like state she was in, staring slack jawed at the glowing runes in moonlight. She did a double take, first toward the door, than back to the map that looked moments from catching fire. But it was when she heard a distressed noise from a soft and innocent voice, that it set Sybbie's blood aflame. She had no other recourse, it was not even choice, she immediately went out the door to protect her little sister. But not before getting one last disbelieving look at the glowing map that had once led George into the midnight paths of the City of the Dead, just a stone's throw from the French Quarter.

Immediately, Sybbie rushed down and across the hall toward the sitting room where there was much commotion. Inside she saw the group of young men all scattering around. They were rushing around the room, making nervous and disagreeable noises. Meanwhile, and more pressing to the young beauty's cares, was Marigold. Never before, but once, when they were so small, had Sybbie seen the ballerina so terrified. The young and lovely girl was tucked into the corner of the sitting room, her knees drawn up to her breasts. Marigold was hiding her face in sheer terror of memories and helplessness. The sight nearly destroyed Sybbie when exposed to the child like state of her cousin, best friend, and sister. She immediately rushed to her, trying to take her in her arms. But the girl only squirmed and began crying, too afraid to even look to see who was touching her. She kept begging to be left alone, and that she didn't want to go with him. The girl couldn't understand what she was saying or what she meant at all …

"BOO!"

When Sybbie snapped alertly, she made a startled gasp, her back smacking hard against the wall next to Marigold. From out of the shadows of the lamp lit room was a sinister figure. She recognized the button down shirt and dark tie tucked under the sleeveless, pull over, grey sweater. She knew of the cut off trousers that went over the knee high socks. In any other circumstance she wouldn't be frightened. But it was when she came face to face with the horned, spiked, and scaly Nubian mask that she was taken completely out of her element or depth. Even now, there was nothing more frightening to be snuck upon by. Not only was it the look, but the very feeling, the very essence which gave it its presence, feeding off on one's most private fears. Even in its very muted and toothless state within the walls of Crawley House, it remained still, the most evil thing that one could encounter in life.

It was in such turmoil and bitter fighting among the family, of the likes that the girl had never seen before, was what she associated with the mask. Her one experience was predicated on those horrible memories, and the helpless months of waiting for news of one so far away, locked in battle in New Orleans with it. And it was, to come face to face with such a thing, in person, that it fed off the old pain and sorrows in her heart. They're swirling cyclone feeding the phantasmal haunting of its endless symbolism for the many ills of the Crawley family over the years. Chiefest among them was keeping George from a lonely young girl that needed her best friend. It kept from her the only person who could've saved her from self-destruction and the many secret predators in her parent's lives which had captured such a lovely broken hearted young thing. Perverted and slithering snakes that lured her away from the protective arms of her family and set her upon a path of the deepest darkness of vice and carnal sin to fill what one boys war of vengeance against a Cultist Preacher took from her.

However, with just a sinister lilt to a familiar chuckle, the girl's boyfriend lifted the mask up to the top of his head. There was a great jest to his teasing of the girl when he shown his respectably good looking face to the lamplight. But no one else was laughing among his companions. Even with the light-heartedness of adolescent pranks, the most talented trickster knew, intuitively, that an item such as the Nubian Mask was not something that one handles lightly. These were Sybbie's exact sentiments voiced with paint curling rancor at her young suitor. She'd forgive many a prig for stupid things done to flirt or impress her, but making Marigold cry, would never be one of them. But ever still did the future Cornish Duke continue to play around, giving a few other boys chase making animal noises as he slid the mask back over his face.

But Sybbie's anger only grew, turning to Marigold who was so suddenly and completely torn asunder. The reappearance of the African mask in her life again had so ably mired the ballerina in old and deep trauma. That night, during the season, had been many people's first time hearing about the George's duels with the Shaman. But there were only a handful of people standing there that stormy night that knew what Jonah Robinson spoke of in the description of a threadbare cultist in robes and Voodoo adornments. There were those in the room that had gone to New Orleans in search of a young boy they loved, and in getting lost in the old streets, heavy with atmosphere and dark things of dreams, some of them were taken by the dark powers that sniffed out her purity and innocence like a dog in heat. And at least one of the three Crawley women within that room had been that beast's captive. Hours had felt like a lifetime under true evil's cold hand that touched her skin and stroked her golden hair. The memory of it, even having been rescued by the boy she loved, made Marigold want to flee far from the ghost of such memories and frightened tactile feelings of ice cold hands caressing her. When she slept, ever did a dark voice haunt her, whispering all the things he would do to her once he murdered her one true love.

It never occurred to Sybbie, it shocked her to never have heard, that the thing that the monster had stolen from George … The challenge to come save this prized treasure in a very public sword duel that went from parade float all the way to the top of a French Quarter roof top. The very duel which George had cut off the Voodoo Priest's hand had all been fought to rescue Marigold. The very thought of it made the raven haired teenage girl's blood run ice cold, made her anxious. It suddenly made sense to why no one, especially Marigold and George, spoke of the climax of the "Bush Wars" in New Orleans. Why no one spoke of when their Granny, Aunt Edith, and Marigold accompanied the American FBI in the rescue of George and his friends from the KKK. Sybbie hadn't been able to get Jonah's story out of her head of the girl, Lillian Bordeaux, which George had saved. Nor what that monster did to her. Now she could only grieve and shutter in fear of what he must have done to Marigold in the short time that she was his prisoner. But it tore her apart most, because, whatever awful thing she could imagine was at play by the sheer terror in Marigold's mental shut down at the very sight of the mask again.

"George will come for me. George will come for me. George will come for me."

"Knock it off, Edmund!" Sybbie raged over Marigold's little choked sobs of a mantra she recited while she rocked back and forth.

But to the red hot steel of her voice, right out of the forge, the young man, who was playfully chasing his mates, stopped. But there was something very different about him. He was quite jovial, too jovial, and in his sunny disposition was a large, almost painful too look at, rictus grin that was made of pure cruelty and malice. The rush of adrenaline and exhilaration, magnified by the item he wore, brought out many a great and terrible urges of varied kinds. Most especially were the contrarian feelings of absolute cruelty in concerning Marigold. The quiet sobbing and fear whiffing off such a young and innocent girl of such rare beauty was like the hooking melody of one's favorite song that had to be replayed over and over again. And in Sybbie's anger, he felt the need, the desire, to double down hard, to punish her for … for his delight.

He felt and looked quite like a beast in blood lust - top of the food chain, wanting to tear apart everything in sight to see where these new feeling fit in this new outlook in life. When he rushed forward at Sybbie and Marigold, he made a loud caterwauling noise, raising his arms to scoop them up, jumping at them. He reveled in vicious delight at the sobbed mewling noise the golden ballerina made, while Sybbie had flinched hard, face paler than usual.

CLICK!

The entire universe suddenly halted all at once when a sharp metallic noise echoed in the sitting room of Crawley House. Everyone was frozen solid for a moment. They all whirled around to see a figure standing in the doorway. He had a sleek and futuristic revolver, retrofitted and reconstructed by a genius gunsmith named Jiro Sato from its original build as Matthew and Sybil's Webley.

George Crawley had looked disheveled and wore down, his grown out raven curls were wind swept from a long night's ride by motorcycle headlight. He bore a yellowed bruise on his cheekbone. Taped gauze covered a thin gash across his right eye. And his entire left hand, up to his finger joints, was bandaged. It seemed that the last two weeks of his life had not been a pleasant trip. He wore his usual button down and Henley combo covered by his faithful peacoat of beaten leather, collar drawn up in the back, a pair of long leather gauntlets were stuffed in his jacket pocket. An aviator's navy blue cotton scarf was wrapped and lopped around his neck, while a pair of goggles were pushed up to his forehead. At the sight before came a deep and frightening intensity to his hardened cerulean eyes as he drew his six gun.

The word "deadly" was not an apt description of the young man. The word seemed to betray a demureness that was not fitting for something so "thunder and lightning" in the elemental fierceness within him at what he saw. Had he come home to find his sitting room afire, while his worst enemy in the universe ruthlessly sodomized Lady Grantham, it would not fit with the sheer alarm and violence that torqued every one of George's bruised and weary muscles in sight of the Nubian Mask on the loose again.

"Take it off …"

There was a gravely growl to the youth's cold voice as he held the Head Boy at gun point. It was a look that Sybbie had never seen on George before. She had seen some dangerous and tense situations as George's partner. But going toe to toe with a conman in livery, or a group of Whitechapel toughs wasn't nearly the same as the struggles associated with some of the more dangerous villains George crossed blades with in America and Mexico. In truth, Sybbie had never seen her best friend at the peak of his abilities. She wasn't allowed to go to New Orleans, and all things considered, she found it a blessing. And when her daddy was kidnapped by mercenaries and taken into Northern Mexico, George had sent Marigold and Sybbie all the way back up to San Antonio, by train, while he and their Aunt Edith went across the border, on horseback, to rescue him. But there was something different about this encounter, something that he knew that they didn't about the item that her boyfriend was wearing as a joke. This wasn't just about touching things that didn't belong to them …

There was something much more serious than even Sybbie realized.

But much to the surprise of everyone, who had chills running down their spine, the future Duke did not comply. Instead he turned toward George and sized him up. The first thing he commented on, in a jovial voice, was that the young man, which everyone talked about like he was some Knight of the Round Table, wasn't that big. Even when their other friends quietly told him to quit messing around and do what he was told, there was an inflamed contrarian sense of combativeness toward his antagonist.

"He's not that big …" The Head Boy kept saying under his breath under the mask. It was a repetition that was getting fainter, his stalwart form starting to lean to and fro as if under the influence of strong drink.

"Now!" George drew the click of the trigger of his father and aunt's revolver. His voice gave everyone a jump.

"Stop playing around Edmund! The jokes are over, this is serious!" Sybbie tried hard to defuse the situation.

"Ed, chap, just let it go!" Marigold's boyfriend whispered. His hands were up in surrender, clear admission to being an intruder and trespasser.

There was a look of disbelief and panic on the faces of those who saw that the mask was starting to glisten in the moonlight as the wobbling figure paced backward in a sickened lurch. There was just the slightest of glaze on the ancient wood that was dark and viscous … like blood. He held his hand up toward a very dark and alert looking George Crawley who was completely at battle stations in every part of his being. Then, with a chuckle that sounded rather pained, the boy gave his supposed rival for Sybbie's affections the middle finger.

"I don't miss, Asshole!" George warned aiming his weapon aggressively.

"Oh …" the boy began to cough out a chortle. "I believe it …" He nodded. The growing perspiration on the mask was starting to form droplets ever so slightly between the scales. "I remember what you did to … Hehehehehahaha!" He began laughing, holding his stomach. Sybbie was horrified as were the rest of the teens. Though he was laughing, his body language spoke of a terrible pain and fear. Suddenly, the boy collapsed onto his hands and knees. It sounded as if his lungs were filled with phlegm, his whole body heaved as if he were retching, though nothing spilled forth. But every time it seemed as if he would scream for help, he only laughed, and after every dry heave, he only laughed harder. It was strange and terrible looking torment that chilled the teenagers' blood in sight of it.

"Ed?"

"Don't go near him!" George halted a larger boy of great girth with an alpha's command that he obeyed without question.

Suddenly, after a long moment of silence … the group, slowly, gathering tentatively in a wide circle around him. "TADA!" Suddenly the boy shot up to his feet, causing everyone to scramble backward, except George who still had him at gun point. To their fearful reaction the young man only began to laugh with abandon, a perfect mixture of pain and sadistic glee.

Suddenly the boy went quiet, looking nowhere and everywhere in the room as if seeing it for the first time through new eyes. Sybbie shuttered when, slowly, the Head Boy turned his attention toward her, and then fixated on her. She felt so very cold under the darkening and growing abyss of the eye slits. The only comfort of such stupidity and folly had been that she could still see Edmund's eyes. But now, slowly, they were disappearing into a growing shadow. But what chilled Sybbie's blood most was that he saw right through her, saw everything dark and vile about the things she had done. Being in her presence, alone, was like sipping a good vintage of wine. It could almost feel the sickness of her deeds, giving it just a boost in a home which ever blanketed its full potential to but a whimper. But just a taste of Sybil Branson's sins was like rocket fuel.

"This is your final warning! Take it off, or I swear to God your dusty Duchess of a mother and your San Francisco whore of a granny will weep at your close casket funeral!"

George Crawley's voice was so hard and graveled that it could rip flesh from bone, his posture like a guard dog about to spring forth from a threadbare leash about to snap. The youth's famed six gun was aimed right at the baron's heart, his blue eyes cold and steady, looking much like Lady Mary, maybe too much.

But to the threat the masked figure only tilted his head.

When his voice spoke, it made everyone shutter. It wasn't the same as it was, muffled and jovial. Now it was impossibly deep and bass, covering every inch of the room. To the girl it was like something else was being hosted in his body, speaking to them through her boyfriend.

"I have no doubt … no doubt you'll kill him. You've killed many men Crawley, mmm, many men. It haunts you doesn't it? You see them still, all those faces of the dead at the end of that 'Ray Gun' of yours? I sometimes wonder what you tell yourself when it's just you, in this house, alone. How you live with all their faces and little last moments before their world went dark? Do they know, these girls here who love you? Do they know about the others? The other people you've killed, boy? Do they know about New York? Do they know what you did to those rich old women? Or would it make Sybil afraid of you … if she knew what you did that night? You know, baby girl was no better than your Auntie Rose was in New York. Did you know what she did the entire night of her sixteenth birthday? When your family had planned such a marvelous party for her … but she never showed up. She told them that she had better things to do? Do you know what that was?"

"Shh!" Sybbie shook her head in pleading despair, running a finger across her lips before putting it over them, trying to shush the boy in the mask. The girl had a sudden, child-like, reaction to the threat of the information coming out. "No, please, shhh …" All she could get out was another shush in emotional whimper from the grave humiliation and horror of the memories and actions of that night being spoken aloud to someone she loved most in the world. She could not bear for George to hear of the greatest of darkness and vice that lay heavily over her very soul.

"All night, in between the courses of a great feast and interludes during the dances at a great ball, Lords, Ladies, and dowagers took turns. They'd all 'go up' to find a gorgeous young girl done up beautiful waiting for them on a silk bed of rose pedals, completely naked. Cordially, and in honor of her sixteenth birthday, all the guests left her such fine jewels as tokens before they took their turn at her. By the next morning she had so many 'guests' in the night and morning that had left diamond chokers, necklaces, and bracelets that the 'proud birthday girl' looked like a Hindu goddess. Your Grandmother had been looking forward to the date, planning meticulously for months, just for her eldest grandchild's birthday party, and what did she do? She was a rented harem girl for Nazis. But if she only knew, if she only knew what happened in New York, like we do. She thinks you would've saved her if you had been here, not hunting Mexican revolutionaries, or locked away in a Saltillo dungeon. But you and I, you and your Aunt Rose, we know better, don't we? What was it, four, five, old Knickerbocker women that had Rose at a time in New York? Hell fire, boy! Do you wanna know how many old women tasted the birthday girl that night or in general over the years? Or do you want to know the overall number of both men and women that have had her over the years you've been gone?"

Tears flowed down the girl's cheek as she retreated back to Marigold while everyone else shot damning, horrified, or deeply disgusted eyes toward her.

"So how do we play it, boy? Are you gonna go hunt down every Countess, Marchioness, Duchess, and dowager that bought their 'yummy girl' cheap for entertainment on their country retreats with trinkets and attention? You gonna wipe out half the House of Lords for the service she provided them during the last three seasons, Crawley? Or are you gonna cut your losses and just put your beautiful little partner down like a sick dog, the way you did poor Lillian?"

All eyes, suddenly, quickly, fell on George in shock. They had all been reeling from learning about such a disturbing revelation about Sybil Branson. A secret that their parents, half of whom had already 'tasted' the girl, willingly kept from them in hopes of using it as blackmail one day soon to produce a bride for a son in need of a fortune and social standing. But every person who had been in Grantham House's drawing room that one night during the height of the season, who heard Jonah's story, was shaken up even further. They had all been thinking about young Lillian Bordeaux for months, wondering, even for a beat or two of day dreaming, what the now sixteen year old girl of New Orleans class was doing with her life. Somehow, even those who didn't believe Jonah Robinson's, felt a ton of bricks fall at their 'friends' accusation that George Crawley had gunned such innocent finery down in cold blood. Even the staunchest friend of Eton would never sink so low as to believe that of George Crawley. But they could only watch in disbelief as a deep and crippling guilt came over the young hero, weakening him greatly in the reminder.

"POP! POP! POP!"

The masked figure made mocking gunshot sounds, thumping his chest where the bullets had hit the young girl as if he had been right there when it happened. "And down she went, crying the entire time!" He cackled at the irony. It could be argued that if one was to believe that, if the mask waned in the walls of the unbreakable wholesomeness of Crawley House. That the jovial cruelty and zeal, being put against George, the revealing of an awful deed, shattering the hero's Arthurian Knight's image, was all the future Cornish Duke. These sentiments of influence having been born with nil to do with an African mask, at all.

"Please, George, please … it wasn't me, please, you have to believe me!" From a young man of eighteen years of age, who spent his entire life in the high streets of London and English Countryside, came the sweetest of innocent Southern American accents of a young girl. "I'm sorry, please, tell them that I'm sorry … I know I must have done wrong … because, it was you who did it … God forgive me … God, please, forgive me … it must have been my fault!" A small voice eked out as she slowly faded away.

There was a demon living somewhere in George Crawley's past. And in the one-two reveal of Sybbie's sins and perfect mimicry of a young girl's last words, it struck like a snake, long coiled in wait.

THUNK!

George rushed in unseen with a flash of raging aggression. There was a blank and feral look in his blue eyes as he came at the masked figure. He placed his hand over the Nubian Mask's face and forced the Baron's head back. It gave a mighty thunk that rattled all the items on that side of the room when the back of his skull smashed against the wall. The rage filled youth's fist made a loud thwack against ancient wood, the future Duke's pinned head vibrated like a base board from the absorption of the powerful blow. So violent was the hit that it made everything on the walls of the sitting room shake. And upon the second hit, the painting of George Washington fell with a crash onto the floor from the vibrations through the walls. The Baron slid to a sitting position on the floor, seemingly knocked unconscious from the sheer power of the hammer like blows his head received.

But suddenly, he snapped awake and made a limping and clumsily off kilter crawl, the body moving like a marinate puppet, for the door like a cornered cat that sees a path of escape from a narrow alley. Desperation was in some driving force that longed, with every fiber of its evil being, to get outside. It needed to get away from the Boa Constrictor's death grip of Crawley House. But just as it could taste the freedom of ether in the rich darkness that surrounded this English County and those who ruled over it, it was halted.

George snatched the Baron's leg and dragged him back, where his boot met with the head boy's gut. With a violent cough, the peer held his hand up in some subconscious call for a reprieve from the absolute beating he was receiving from George. But there was worse than rage in his adversary's eyes, there was nothing at all. In one display of limitless strength and a loss of sanctity and reason, they had but a taste of what had been unleashed the last time George Crawley came against one bearing the Mask of the Nubian Tree in the City of the Dead. With a grunted noise of unrestricted anger and effort, George grabbed the other boy by his grey sweater vest and lifted him off his feet. With a spinning heave, he threw the masked youth across the room and head first through the heavy frame of the Ku Klux Klan banner. The flag unfurled from the busted glass, the weight of the old silk pulling down the oaken frame that landed with a heavy thud on top of the motionless and bleeding figure that lay on the sitting room floor.

"George!"

Sybbie called in alarm as she watched her best friend begin to stalk with heavy, audible, boot steps toward her boyfriend. But her shock fell on deaf ears. The masked figure was supporting himself on a forearm, his body draped by the very symbol of hate in the American South. With a grip as hard as steel, the masked fiend was clutched by his throat and lifted to his feet, all with just one hand. Once more the room shook when George pinned him to the wall by his pale neck. With a gruesome gag, the Baron wheezed while, slowly, George began lifting him off the ground. The youth kicked in a panic while slowly being lifted aloft under the flickered eyes of pure murder and hatred. The youth throttled Sybbie's boyfriend one handedly, fingers tightening around his throat.

"I'll break you in half!" The snarl in a feral and uncontrollable torrent of anger was coated in all one memory, one moment, and one split second reaction one awful night in New Orleans.

"Sybil, he's killing him!"

"Please!"

"George, stop!"

(Main Title: Prologue (Beauty and the Beast) – Alan Menken)

Suddenly, the noises and gags fell away, the feet stopped kicking. But then, like a reptile that could unhinge body parts, the masked figure leaned in closer to George. From the captured Baron a deep and booming voice began speaking in growled tongues of an aggressive language that no one understood but George. Once more, he stood face to face, and toe to toe, in a battle of wills with a great evil. When everyone else flinched away in fear from the frightening noises it made with an ancient and foreign language that cracked courage like an egg, George Crawley held his ground.

"This won't change a thing! Go on, kill this titled fool, kill as many like him as you can. Lock me in your cellar for eighty years … But, mark my words … you will never be rid of me, boy! You and the ballerina will whelp your secret bastard, and then she'll throw him away, before anyone knows, like last week's gossip column. You'll take the boy and raise him, with that whore over there playing Mama. But, one day, your family will find out, they'll find out who the bastard's real mother is! In that chaos, as everything they all hold dear dissolves around them, she'll come to me in a mask of grief and betrayal. And on that day, when I'm free, mark my words, boy! I'll make the House of Grantham and all of its decedents wish they were never born!"

On that dark night a black and vengeful curse was sworn upon the noble House of Grantham and all those yet to be born to it.

George growled at the very threat to his family's future in demon's dark prophecy. With another room rattling slam of the Baron's head against the wall, the young man grasped the bottom end of the mask and began to pry. It seemed comical at first, for there were no straps or elastic buckles that held it in place. It seemed rather 'much ado about nothing' to simply slip the mask off. But there was a deeply straining and beyond rage filled look on George. From the motion of the force that the boy was giving, it looked as if the thing was super glued, or yet, welded onto the Head Boy's face. It was only backed up by the sheer volume of Sybbie's boyfriend's painful scream as his mouth and chin were exposed while the adventurer growled in sheer will. It was an abyss of darkness fueled by many dark yesterdays, mistakes, tragedies, and lasting consequence ever burdening one soul. The many guilty and regretful memories spoken by the masked figure tonight came together to provide a deep well of darkness and hatred that fueled his strength.

The Baron collapsed lifelessly as the mask finally went flying, clattering loudly in the center of the sitting room.

"Get back!"

The adventurer's echoed powerfully in the country house when he snapped at the group of young men that tried to come to their mate's aid. They watched as George got to his feet and left the room quickly. Heading George's orders, they did not get closer, but still did they all gathered around at a safe distance and observed the young man at their feet.

"Good God!"

From that moment the room was suddenly filled with gasped horror at the reveal of the young chap newly freed. He was a deathly pale, every single vein that a human had in their face was swollen and visible through the skin. They had the look of the darkest of blues in their arteries. It was shuttering and frightening sight to see on any human being. More so, the enlarged and exposed capillaries spoke to where the glossy perspiration on the mask came from. It seemed more parasitic than symbiotic, the mask of man eating bark devouring its host body and soul. Just as distressing were the boy's eyes, whose irises were sucked to the back of his head, showing nothing but blood shot whites. It was unsure as to if this was due to the intense choking or some other influence.

When George returned he had an old Spanish crucifix in hand. They all watched as he slid on his knees to the side of the youth he had just given a beat down too. It seemed night and day, the black hearted rogue, to the shining knight that knelt by the Baron's side. He lifted the old nun's cross in hand up to his forehead pressing to it hard as he quietly spoke solemn words in a Latin. They all thought he had lost his mind as he whispered holy words with eyes squeezed shut. Then, without a warning, the youth slapped the figure of Christ on the cross down upon the boy's head.

George closed his eyes again, whispering some prayer's blessing as he pressed the cross down the other teen's forehead. They thought it all nonsense at first, till they saw that the veins on his face began to recede, and then disappear. His lids fluttered closed for a beat or two, then, with a violent coughing fit, his eyes flew open with the irises returned to normal. George removed the Crucifix from his head and leaned away on his back foot as the Head Boy violently flipped himself over, getting to his knees, head planted on Isobel Crawley's rug, hands rubbing at his throat desperately.

His attacker and savior got back to his feet, tossing the old rosary on an end table. The sigh of relief from the room was cut short, when Marigold's boyfriend was ripped from his knees at his cousin's side and lifted off his feet. The junior polo champion was brought to eye level by George who looked cold and fairly dangerous, dangling in the air.

"You scrape that son of a bitch off my floor, and you get the hell out of my father's house!" His tone was gravelly and barely restrained. "And if I ever catch you or any one of your effeminate little shit birds even breathing in this direction, I'll kill you." With a loud thunk, George flung down the underclassman hard on the floor. "I'll kill you …" He repeated with a nodding promise at the host of looks he got in alarm.

There was no fight or pride saving words needed by those who just witnessed something that they'd deny ever happened for the rest of their lives. Their dreams ever haunted by it. They quickly hauled up their ringleader, wrapping his arms around their shoulders. As a group they absconded out of Crawley House, never to set foot inside again … Not for all the tea in China.

Soon enough the three Grantham grandchildren were alone in the dark house. Sybbie had her back against the wall as silence once more claimed the rooms. The girl's blue eyes were considerably shaken, not only from the terrifying things she just saw, but from the tortured reminder of her sins just behind her, and their detailed context to George. The comfort of the house, of the surroundings did much to sooth her, to center her. There was a tonic to one standing in a place that was much considered home as the place she was born just down the stone road. But when she turned, she found that George was crouching over the discarded mask.

A shaky and bandaged hand reached out to pick it up, but just inches away, he halted. His eyes squeezed shut in a shot of what looked like pain, of either memory or physical ache of some sort. He took a deep breath and continued to stare at it. From where the girl was standing, it seemed strange. It was a lifeless, empty, shell of African wood that lay harmlessly on the floor like a cheap sundry, a misplaced decoration of a themed room. Sybbie watched as George slowly retracted his hand, resting it on his knee, with a worn shake of his head. He scrubbed his face with his hands, before he stood, leaving the mask idle in the middle of the room.

More than words, or action, it was in that one quiet interaction that spoke volumes of the long and bloody history between the man and the mask.

He turned and began pacing toward a shaken Marigold who had yet to let her guard down sniffling in the corner. Sybbie had an uneasy smirk when she anticipated his eyes to fall over her. But she felt a deep pang of hurt when his glanced passed over her as if she wasn't there at all. As he walked toward the girls, it was all in his posture, that he did not acknowledge the presence of Sybbie at all. It was not the time for it, and deep down, she knew that. But a part of her couldn't help but feel indignant. She cast some parlance of blame upon the young man's shoulders. This happened, because, he thought that she was too demure, too weak, to handle the tough stuff, the danger. If he had trusted her more, if he included her, they wouldn't be here.

"Hey!" Sybbie was stern voiced as she grabbed George's forearm as he tried to breeze past her.

THUMP!

Before the girl could even tighten her grip on the leather of his sleeve, the boy grabbed her arm off him. Then, with extremely heightened aggression, he grabbed handfuls of Sybbie's white blouse and shoved her on top of the end table. Their picture, mail, and the Queen of the Nile's dagger clattered to the floor. Her eyes were wide in shock and surprise as her brother pinned her to the wall, her dark blue skirt caught on the end table that she was sitting on. The boy bared his teeth in a deep anger that was directed solely at Sybbie.

"Do you have any idea, any idea … an inkling, you ignorant jackass!" He roared in her face.

"Fuck off!" Sybbie snapped at him trying to free herself, but George had her dead to rights.

"Do you know what you could've done!?" He shook her violently. "Do you know what you could've set loose!?" He raged. "Goddamn it, Sybbie!" His voice broke for a moment, desperation, fear, lacing his words, making Sybbie's defensive struggle end with a sympathetic lilt to her sad demure eyes. "Our family, our friends, Jesus Christ, girl! Granny, Rachel, Uncle Tom, Anna, Thomas, Mom … they all live here! Do you know what could've happened if it had gotten out of this house?!" He pointed toward the front door. "Do you want that on your conscious? Huh? You want to trade the lives of everyone we love just so you could show off to your dipshit boyfriend?!" He asked.

"That's not what happened! And it wouldn't have happened if you had just taken me with you!" She pushed him off her.

George looked ready to explode. "This isn't a game, Sybbie!" He roared at her. "This isn't a night of playing grab ass with your mama's boys! People get hurt, people die … And all it takes is one mistake, one stupid, little, mistake! Do you know how many people could've died, tonight? Do you know how many people that could've died for weeks, months, years after the fact? It doesn't just kill you, it doesn't just kill your friends, it kills everyone that ever knew you and everyone who ever loved you! It won't stop till it erases you and your very memory from existence!" He was so angry he was shaking.

With an aggressive push, the girl got in George's face. "It, it, it … it's a mask, George! You killed the man that made it what it was! You're not on the Nautilus anymore! Or in some New Orleans catacombs looking for Grandmamma's ruby! This is Downton, this is our home, there are no monsters infused in masks, or Mexican bandits hiding in the woods! For God's sake, listen to yourself, George!" The girl was furious. "You always do this! You always set people's teeth on edge! Everyone can move on, learn to live with what life gives them! But no, not George Crawley! He locks himself up in his study, shadow boxing every piece of shite who ever gave him a sour look, lionizing them till they're some made up voodoo demon trapped in a mask! Not some sadistic wanker who was jealous, because, I love you! And you'll condemn and damn anyone who has the temerity to suggest that you let it go!" She screamed right in his face.

"You ignorant piece of Belgravia trash!" George snarled bitterly. "This might be hard for you to grasp, Princess, since you don't have any … but when you have friends, real friends, you see them beyond society functions and Granny's dumbass dinner parties! They're your friends because they stick with you through thick and thin, see you through the worst of life! When you have no one else, you have them!" He met Sybbie's aggression. "So when something kills one of them, you don't take it on the chin and move on! And when you get one of them killed, you don't brush it off!

"You have lunch with Daisy and Andy once a week. You work twice a month at Uncle Tom's auto shop with the grease monkeys. You drive down to Bath and Brighton on holiday with Marigold and Rachel. And you think you know something about the world?! You play fuck doll to half the gentry, so that they could throw their family heirlooms and sons at you! And you think you know something about hardship?! Huh?! I've seen suffering, I've starved on the Llano Estacado, and I was imprisoned in Saltillo with the worst criminals in Mexico for the life of a Turk that died here, years before we were born! I've seen small children bury their parents on the side of the road on the way to California, entire wedding parties lynched by the Klan, because, a Southern Belle had fallen in love with a Catholic! I've killed men, and I've heard my friends dying, and held them in my arms as they cried for their mama till their very last breath, and I buried them with my own two hands … on their TENTH BIRTHDAY! I know the real world! And I'll tell you right now, that it's not this fake ass fantasy land that Mom, Uncle Tom, and Donk crafted for you! Where you play dress up in mom's clothes and think you're something, because, you're the first girl to get a couple of engineering degrees on the wall! And all, because, you sucked off a Dean at his granddaughter's eighth birthday party cause some actor Nazi shit-bird told you too! So don't talk at me about what is and isn't out there in the world, or what I need to let go, because, you don't know a Goddamn thing about it, girl!"

The boy didn't hold back, not once. He had become fiercely angry in a way that only a person who loves someone beyond reason could be when pushed to the edge by fear for them. The two were so close to one another that their breath hotly steamed their sweat covered faces as if they were staring into a ventilation pipe. But George's fell in self-disappointment when he saw Sybbie's heart break in the glassy fallen look at his heated words. They both went after each other's weaknesses, but the fight was never fair, even on a level playing field. George had spent his entire life taking the worst brunt of people's assumptions of him, always knowing what people had said about him in mock and insult. He had an incredibly thick skin and could take almost anything said about him, even by those he still, begrudgingly, loved.

But Sybbie wasn't that way and had never been.

She was an incredibly sensitive and tender hearted girl when it came to those she loved. There had been plenty of people who had said terrible things about her, and she couldn't care less. But the first criticism or stinging chastisement from her family, from the people she did love, could irreparably damage her. And George, even in his anger, had always tempered himself to not cross the line. But this time, he was laid bare after two weeks of danger only to find himself home, confronted by his worst nightmare. In his weariness, injuries, and incredible alarm, he did not guard his words. But he knew it was a mistake when the tears came falling freely from Sybbie's eyes.

"I hate you …" She whispered vulnerably.

But when he reached for her in a moment of seeking forgiveness, she shoved him away from her. "I hate you!" she screamed in a half sob as she strode out of the sitting room, marching down the hall toward the front door. When she felt George following her, she turned, taking a frame from the wall and throwing it at him. He moved out of the way easily as the picture made a crunching sound on the rug.

"Yeah?!" George scoffed in renewed anger at the aggressive action. "Well I hate you right back, you spoiled bitch!" he roared at her.

Sybbie threw open the front door with a hard slam, turning vengefully back on him. She looked to be in terrible pain at the words he said to her, but more importantly, the pent up anger of the feeling of abandonment. She had thought they were partners, that they'd spend the rest of their lives doing everything together. But in the last few weeks, she had felt as if he was gone again. That he had left her all alone once more. The girl, still recovering from such terrible life choices made too young, still unsure about where she stood with their family, believed that he was the only home she had. And in the days of his absence, she grew greatly afraid of all her sins folding in on her. Without him there to hold her hand, his strength to support her, she felt vulnerable and so terribly alone. The posh beauty would take the most ardent of danger by the most heinous of Nazi, than be left alone with her thoughts and memories of her wickedness. In that moment, she saw his departure and words on his return as a betrayal, and she couldn't take it, couldn't live with the things he said to her. So Sybbie Branson did what she had always done best …

Get the first shot off before her heart could be broken.

"I wish you never came home!" She cried. "We'd all have been happier if you just stayed gone …. Better yet …" She stopped herself at a sob.

Something dark and incredibly sad moved across George's eyes when she paused. "Say it …" George said quietly, clearing his throat of emotion. "Go on, say it!" He snapped at her. Instead the girl only ran out of the dark hallway and onto the front lawn. George followed her to the doorway, watching as she braced herself on the rounded garden table, crying hard, overturning an old rusted white chair on the cobble stone in her torrent of emotions.

"Go on …" George baited angrily. "Go on, say it, you goddamn coward!" he roared at the girl in the bitter autumn air.

"I wish you died!" She screamed at him. "We'd all be better off if you died in America! We'd all be so much happier! Things would be easier, if you had just died!" Her voice was hoarse from such a primal and painful admission of such evil thoughts. Immediately, the girl covered her own mouth in speaking such horrible things that were killing her soul.

George only scoffed, eyes hurt deeply, deeper than they had ever been. "You know, when you're right, you're right, Syb …" He nodded.

His agreeing hurt worse than anything else he could've said in retort.

Seeing the deep pain in his eyes, the sound of her own voice echoing that she had wished that George had died, it killed her inside. It made her feel much, if not incredibly worse, than all the times after sex. Her belly or lower back slickened with seed, feminine fingers or tongues giving the last lingering stroke to her womanhood. The high of her glorious release was gone with nothing left but the smell and shame that lingered afterward. Their hands had always grabbed and petted her flesh, kissing and suckling her, their panting ministrations of afterglow's affection that made her cry. She had wanted to throw up, to hide away, as they always wanted more, never realizing, not caring, that the madness had passed, and this sultry young beauty in their bed did not want to do it again. She was not their whore, their bed slave, yet they treated her as such, and made her remember it through the night, paying her in priceless heirlooms.

She felt the way she did a year ago at her vanity, Anna fastening a new diamond choker to her pale throat. Granny, so naïve and loving, complementing on how lovely it looked on her, asking where she got it from with a proud smile at her little girl. To be in the room with two women she loved greatly, and being reminded of the answer. To be on the silk bed covered in rose peddles while Lord and Lady Rothsguard debated if they wanted to share the sweat slicked and panting naked girl posed seductively on the bed, or take turns with her. Even perhaps, maybe, they'd invite Lady Rothsguard's nephew up so they might get it all done in one go so not to miss the important gossip. She had remembered the blasé way the old Countess threw the diamond choker at "The Nazi Slut", like she was giving six pence to a homeless waif. All the while her fat, middle aged, nephew assured his uncle that his grandmamma's jewelry would not go to waste. His confidence shown in the worshipful lapping of the sweat off the sensitive girl's navel, claiming that the Celtic goddess would earn every sparkle of her soon to be step-papa's price. She remembered gasping tenderly, seeing the Lord and Lady pour themselves some brandy. She heard them gossiping casually about their fellow guests while they watched 'the show', the old lord checking his time piece in boredom, waiting for their turn with her.

It was sometime after Granny had left her and Anna was done, that Thomas nearly jumped out of his skin. He had been sent up to check on why Sybbie hadn't come down to the drawing room yet, with dinner moments away. When he entered the girl's room, he found her on the ledge of her open window, tears streaming down her face, the choker in silk gloved hand. She had thrown quite the fit when Thomas pulled her off, wrestling her to the floor of her bedroom. She sobbed long and helplessly into his chest as the butler held her. The tender hearted man behind his cracked walls of sarcasm and bitterness was in tears of his own, rocking her back and forth, telling her that she was a good girl. He reminded the broken young teen that she was one of his only true friends, and begged her not to leave him. Thomas Barrow, of all the people in Downton Abbey, knew how such a young jewel felt. He preached to her, smoothing her hair paternally, that she mustn't be defeated by 'them'. He would always be on her side, he and Master George, whenever he decided to come home, and she must live in order to show that she was stronger than all of them.

But all of those memories paled compared to how she felt having said what she had to George. All she could do then was remember Thomas's words to her that night. All she could do was rip her soul asunder in the echoes of such terrible things said to a person she had only ever loved so desperately. She didn't know what to do, what to say, all she knew was that she had screamed the very opposite of what her heart and soul knew to be true. But in the hurt that cut deep, too deep, in George's eyes, she was so horribly ashamed for using the one thing she knew could hurt him and stabbing him in the heart with it in the heat of a childish tantrum.

George's teeth gritted as he took a few steps forward to watch Sybbie retreat from his paces. There were a thousand violent things he wished to retaliate against her with for doing and saying everything she had tonight. But instead, he picked up a rock out of the garden as the girl backed away. Finally, his advance into the yard caused the crying girl, mouth still covered, to flee. It was all she thought she could do. A viciously angry, and terribly broken hearted, George sprang after her as she ran down the drive way and fled past the rusted gate, disappearing behind the outer wall of the house.

The young man slid, with the scraping crackle of gravel on stone, to a halt outside the gate. In the distance he saw the figure of a teenage girl in white blouse with red trimmed collar and sleeves, dark blue skirt, and red satin bow in her long locks, flee for Downton Abbey. George wound up and chucked his rock over her shoulder, denting a newspaper box right in front of her. The girl was so taken aback by the distance, power, and accuracy of the boy's arm that she fell to the sidewalk.

"Try not to get bent over in an alley for a pair of some great-aunt's pearl ear rings on the way back!" He shouted raucously into the distance.

His jaw set grimly when he saw Sybbie cover her face with her hands, dejectedly sitting on the sidewalk weeping. He tried as coldly as possible to ignore the teenage girl sobbing on the concrete in front of the newspaper box. He shuffled up the driveway of Crawley House, still hearing the girl he loves sobs in the distance. It was like someone putting his hand to an open flame. His whole body resisted the idea of what he was trying to do. He couldn't just walk away like he didn't care. The image alone, of Sybbie sitting on the sidewalk crying all by herself, it was more than he could bear.

The boy clutched his heart in pain as he squeezed his eyes shut. He felt a wave of sickness inside of him, reflecting on the things he said to her. It went against everything that he was, to abandon a girl he loved like this. He leaned his head heavily on the weatherworn wall in front of Crawley House, her crying echoing down the stone street. With a pained wince he moved to go back to the door, channeling Lady Mary to his very being. But it was no use. It was not in him to treat one he loved the way he had been all his life. With a teary eyed sigh as he glanced to the sky of millions of twinkling stars overhead, he turned back.

But when George walked past the rusted gate, he saw that he was not needed. The polo champion, Marigold's boyfriend, who ran off, had magically reappeared. Had he broken off from the retreat back to the Abbey in order to go back and fetch Marigold? Had it been to apologize for his cousin's stupidity? Or was it to challenge George to a fight, in order to regain his family's honor in sight of the girls they wished to be their wives? Whatever the reason, it was not more important than stopping to help a sobbing girl on the sidewalk. George watched from the distance as the dashing young athlete scooped the girl into his arms. The youth felt a pang of hurt to see her nuzzle her tear stained face into the crook of his chest, arm thrown around his neck.

Eyes closed in disappointment with a sigh. Street lamps lit the figures on the way back to Downton Abbey. He knew it, deep down in his blood. He knew it should've been him. He should've been the one to go and get her back, and tell her how very sorry he was for everything. But it was too late now. It had been left between them with the worst words that could be spoken. Not for the first time in his life, did George know how that felt. For the last meaningful interaction with someone you loved more than life itself to be in the throes of such painful circumstances.

But there was nothing for it now …

("Valiant & Valiant" – Alan Silvestri)

Slowly, defeated, he made the lifetime's length walk back to Crawley House. He trudged up the driveway and past his parked motorcycle. He set his Gram's garden chair back upright before he entered the house once more. He and Sybbie had left the door open in the heat of the fight. George gave one last longing look to the gate, hoping, beyond hope, that he would see her come back. But after a long moment, he knew, after what they had said, she wouldn't. The door made a soft noise as he slowly closed it, letting the warm darkness of his shortly lived childhood home rush over him. After the last two weeks, the quiet stillness of the cozy house should have been a welcome relief after so many nights sleeping above Jonah's Nightclub. But somehow it felt empty on a Friday night. His feet treaded tiredly as he picked up the picture frame that lay face down on the hall carpet. He turned it over and looked on it familiarly.

"The Nobility of Nobility: Young Sleuths Crack Cat Burglar Case"

Among the headline showed a black and white photo of proof. George and Sybbie were pictured standing in the middle of a York street in front of a department store. The two were posing playfully against one another, both holding sacks filled with jewelry, with two of the thief's unlit cigars in their mouths. Behind them was a smoking hatchback that was crashed headfirst into a light pole. Tied there had been the figure of a skinny and unconscious Frenchman who wore a form fitting leather body suit and the most luxurious of mustaches.

George only smirked sadly in memory of Sergeant Willis telling him that it was the only arrest in the history of the York Police Department in which the crook not only confessed to the crime but also his love to the one who caught him. Sybbie had knocked the Frenchman silly with a toaster during a spirited and skilled fist fight with George in the appliances section. Though he had escaped, the concussion from the toaster had caused the thief to crash his get-away car into a light pole. But they soon came to ponder if she might have knocked something loose entirely. Both teens stood by while the gentleman thief got away from the police long enough to drop to his knees and propose marriage to Sybbie. He claimed that the toaster was a sign from heaven itself that she was the love of his life. George had decked 'Romeo' unconscious at Sybbie's feet. The boy claiming "it was a sign alright, that something popped out of that toaster, and it sure as hell wasn't any goddamn toast …" as they watched the police pick the thief up and toss him into the back of the wagon.

But even months later, every Friday morning, Sybbie liked to dump her weekend luggage on George's bedroom floor. When she saw that he hadn't flinched, she would get a mischievous grin, climbing into bed with him. She would always decide to wake him with the soft seductive crooning of the gentleman thief's latest love letter to her in George's ear. The pros, more outrageous than the Frenchman's mustache, always made George sleepily look over his shoulder with a tired squinting face of disbelief. But Sybbie would only giggle as he took his pillow and placed it over his head as she'd skip to 'the best parts'. When she was done, she'd always pretend to take a draft of a cigarette after such a 'spirited' letter. With a big grin, she would then burrow her head under George's pillow seal and begin to make cutesy noises and voices that she knew annoyed him. But when he pushed her face out of his from under the pillow in sleepy agitation, the girl would suddenly start climbing all over him under the covers. She proclaimed loudly, in a scandalous French accent, that the romance from the letter was too strong. She demanded that George must, absolutely, make love to her that very instant. Venus would be offended if he didn't.

Though George would rather resign his fate to being turned into a mythological monster, for ten minutes more of sleep, eventually he fought back. What would follow became a loud and jovial roughhousing and wrestling match that ended with George pinning Sybbie. With an objecting giggle from his prisoner, George would flop on top of her and go back to sleep. For a few minutes she would half-heartedly try to escape from underneath. But, eventually, she always surrendered with a playful groan and then a sigh of resignation. The two would eventually drift asleep peacefully into the later morning hours. George's head pillowed on the bosom of her satin nightgown, and the girl's arms wrapped around his head, threading her fingers through his fairly grown out curls as she slept.

It was on such mornings that a teenage girl's very soul had been saved from the brink. It was the only kind of physical interaction and play, which ended so blessedly wholesome and loving. No one, be it male or female, young or old, would blink in taking the opportunity to turn the jovial interaction into something sexual. Whether it was flipping her over and grinding against her bum, slipping down her satin night slip to her hips to taste her breasts, or stroke and pet her between her legs in preparation for tasting such a lovely girl. In those moments, it never occurred to George, not once, to do such a thing. He only knew that he needed her, loved her, and that she loved and needed him just as much. Sybbie needed his arms and bed to help her forget all of those mistakes she had made in her past. In those mornings they always came together. Listening to a girl's steady heartbeats, feeling her peaceful breath lift and lower his head as he pillowed against her belly, was but a human lifeline that made him forget, for just a while longer, of the many regrets and sorrows of the last decade of his life.

And he already missed it, missed her.

Staring at the headline in the frame, he felt a deep well of sorrow for what had been said and done. But that sorrow was washed away by the flicker in the corner of his eye from the hall. He saw a passing shadow in the sitting room. George could feel the sudden and dangerous build-up of anxiety that threatened to explode. A ripple of intensity coiled his muscles tightly like the torquing pressure on a spring. The frame was hanging back on the hall peg, the boy's fist clenched to do battle.

It was an old training, an old habit that he could be eighty-five years old and still never break. A boy that was hunted from Fifth Avenue to the Tennessee Mountains by Pinkertons and Ku Klux Klansmen, learned how to stay in the shadows, move low and fast, and make no sound before he struck. He could and had followed outlaw bands and marauding Klansmen for miles through desert, swamp, forest, and foothill without being seen or heard, that was, until it was too late … for them. It was a skill that came completely natural now, even in times of peaceful country living. He had ever been accused of 'sneaking up' on people when they turned unawares to find him behind them with casual ease. And he was more than ready to fight the newest intruder that had arrived, or had never left, or even worse, had come to swipe the item that must never again leave Crawley House.

But just as he was about to pounce, he stopped cold. He halted in the doorway, eyes softened and sorrowful.

The moon had been freed from its cloudy prison and shined anew, pushing back darkness and shadow in the light of the first harvest glow of the season. The golden rays of the bloated lantern in the night sky lent its clarity through the tall and wide windows of the sitting room. Their filtration through the frosted and stain glass patches gave it an odd color that looked as if you could almost reach out and touch the beams in solid form. But the strange effect was only heightened by their perfect mixture that fell over a single figure that stood in the middle of the room. The patterns of the light glimmered off the shining net of Marigold's golden hair, as if it was made of moon beams itself. Her pale features softened in the cornucopia of color that shined upon her face, sundress, and mama's pearls.

All anger, fear, and hatred fell away in George's heart in sight of this angel in the moonlight. After months, years, of exile and seclusion from the nearness of her, he had forgotten of the power, the purity, and beauty of his unattainable but ever the faithful and noble Guinevere. The pain seemed to grow stronger the nearer he was to her after so long a separation, out of practice of holding back everything of an old life, an old promise that would now never come true. Inside, the feelings of overwhelming love clashed with the heavier sinking of the great doom that loomed, now, gregariously over every interaction.

People had always found it odd, especially his family, that George could identify someone by the sound of their footsteps. His Granny always had a bombastically amused reaction to being addressed the moment she entered a room while his back was turned. It was another long list of survivalist instincts that was drilled into a boy in his long experience in the wilds of the world, sleeping in Hoovervilles, and his imprisonment and escape from Saltillo. It was a skill that had saved his life more than once over the years. But it was different between him and Marigold. No one had ever been able to understand it, not since they were children. For all the times that George and Sybbie had been described as twins, it had been George and Marigold that had always had an acute sixth sense toward one another.

At all times, in close quarters, or even down the street, the two had always known, sensed when the other was close. They could be in a crowded room and still be able to know where the other was, and not only find each other, but lock eyes in the same moment. When they were younger George had always said that it was just a sign from God that they were meant to be. That it only meant that they were written in the stars, like his parents had been. But now that the truth had come out, maybe that great gift of conjoined souls could now be nothing but the cruelty of a genetically scientific explanation that neither wanted to ponder any closer.

But, either way, all of George's stealth meant nothing while in the presence of Marigold.

"I don't hear it anymore …" Her words were soft and sad.

In the moonlight that fell gently over her ethereal form, the beautiful ballerina had the mask in her hands. Her emerald eyes were staring deeply and intently at the item as if there was nothing else in the world. To this, George immediately tensed again at, possibly, the most nightmarish scene he couldn't have even thought of if he tried. The intensity of the way Marigold looked into the mask, made George's hairs stand on end. He moved forward slowly, hand held out.

"Angel …" He harkened to her seriously and cautiously by her old nickname, back when she was a ward of the family, in another life.

The girl tilted her head. "It's alright, George …" She said. "I …" she shook her head, a look of traumatic emotion was on her face. "I don't hear it anymore." She said again as a single tear fell from her eye.

Slowly, George came up behind her, her back placed against his chest. It hurt all the more to be reminded how perfect they fit together, their bodies almost made to connect together on so many levels. Even just the way they looked together was something right out of an Arthurian painting of the classical romantic period. Slowly, he reached across her and took the mask in one hand. But the girl wouldn't let go of it. She only stared at the scaly and horned visage that had lived in her darkest thoughts for so long. Her mind still polluted with words, evil and terrifying words, spoken as certainties to the fate of a frightened young girl who was reminded so very often by the villain how so very pretty she was … and how he was going to enjoy ruining her.

"It's alright, Angel." George whispered in her ear as they both gripped the mask tightly in their hands. "It's alright …" He nodded as the girl's hand shook.

"No, it's fine, because, I don't hear it anymore … not anymore." Her voice broke a moment. "It doesn't have anything to say to me anymore." She shook her head.

"It never will again, I promise …" He replied. "I'll never let it hurt you again." He risked a gentle brush of his knuckle across her wet milky cheek.

"It was never me that I was afraid it would hurt." She admitted. Then, slowly, she chanced a look over her shoulder at the handsome young man behind her. "It was never myself that I was afraid for … it was never me." She whispered in a half sob.

"It never got the chance …"

George paused before the boastful and guarded lie left his throat. He only had to look at Marigold to know that it wasn't them. When he was with Sybbie, Granny, Anna, and certainly in the rare moments when he was alone with his mom, he could play the confident and cocky youth. The unbreakable man without fear that everyone saw him as. But when he was with Marigold, George Crawley found himself quite unable to lie to her. It wasn't in him to play it all off as something that was in the past, something that rolled right off his back. Emerald eyes shined vulnerably as she waited for him to finish his thought.

"I'm, uh … I'm still here." He nodded comfortingly. His words neither confirmed nor denied the level of hurt and torment that one ancient item had given a young man. Nor could it ever cover the steep price he paid and would continue to pay in defeating and containing such an evil.

Slowly, inch by inch, the girl allowed the words, and the boy's presence, loosen her hold on the item. Eventually, she let the mask slip out of her control. She watched as George held it in his own hands, gripping it hard. Immediately he tensed, his eyes squinched shut, as if he had received a rather sharp ache of the head. For a long moment a great fear screwed her belly and chest tightly as she watched the momentary struggle. But with a sudden flutter of the eyes, the young man's body eased loose, his grip lightening on the seemingly empty shell.

There were theories as to why George Crawley, and George Crawley alone, could assert a level of mastery over the mask. It could be said that being the only one in existence who had ever bested it in combat had merit. Another theory, which may have had held more water than the other, was that he was born of a great love. There was a power to the wholesome purity of a union of two soul mates, which blessed the very stardust of the universe that made a young man. And though long forgotten to mother and son of such things, it was, none the less, true that Matthew and Mary Crawley's greatest prayer and dream was to bring George into existence. And from this dream they conceived a wanted and loved child that stood as the testament and embodiment of all the happiness, heartbreak, and joy of two people that loved one another madly. Thus, it was within George Crawley's very being that he had the greatest of deterrents to darkness's outside sway and influence. Much like Crawley House itself, one could never underestimate the power of a true love, or the strength of its touch in those who were created by it.

But if you were to ask George, he would break it down to the most cynical answer. The mask thrived on fear and doubt from inside one's own mind. But for the young man who had seen much, too much, in his young life. There were sounds, visions, and sights most awful and frightening, the darkest to be found in human suffering, cruelty, and inequity which would forever live inside the boy's head. They were horrors most terrible that even the African mask could not withstand for long …

George Crawley's mind was not a pleasant place to be.

Marigold watched as George took the rosary on the table and walked down the hallway. He stopped into the study a moment, before going down into a pitch black cellar basement under the staircase, creaking old steps echoing with shrill squeals down the dark descent that he took casually. For a long time there was no sound at all, and Marigold was starting to worry. But, then, she had nearly jumped out of her sundress when she heard a loud slam of a heavy cabinet door after what sounded like a struggle. But as the moments passed, she felt a great weight and shadow of threat lift off her heart. Though, she had never once felt the threat of her safety within the confines of the homely house. She did not deny that she was incredibly afraid to walk out the door, as if there was some dark creature of Hell loitering outside the walls, waiting to devour her and everyone else whole. Now, she felt a great burden in the night dissolve, and with it, the dark mark on the county was removed. A great stillness and provincial peace seemed to return to the homely house by the church ruins and overgrown graveyard. There was a brighter tint, almost loving comfort, to the hallways, when George ascended the stairs. She watched as the youth took a key and locked the old cellar. In his hands were tattered and burnt Kanji scrolls that he clenched in his fist tightly.

"Who did that?" She asked as George went inside his study.

"I did …"

"No, I meant, who burned …"

"I did …"

The girl frowned, following the boy into the lamp lit study. He slipped off his goggles from his forehead and removed his long supple leather gauntlets from his jacket pocket. With casual ease, he tossed them and the Kanji scripts down on the table on top a leather map and next to his father's old army compass. Tired cerulean eyes looked stricken with sadness while he undid the looped and pulled scarf around his neck. Quietly he wrapped the navy blue cotton material around the Knight Armor's gorget and swept around the end. Marigold watched him unbuckle his weapon's belt, wrapping the leather ends and silver buckle around the gun holster and knife sheath, dumping it next to the goggles, gauntlets, and Shinto scripts. The heavy, custom, retrofitted Webley and Apache Bowie Knife, used liberally in the last two weeks, made a loud noise as it slid atop a leather medieval map of the Spanish City of Guernica.

"I don't understand?" The girl pressed.

George just blinked as he removed his old leather coat, a gift from the old Science Pirate. Its mahogany beaten leather made from the hide of a creature that had been the last of a species, a creature which the world believed never to have existed in the first place. Though, the newest of George clothing, it had become like a second skin to the boy in the short time he had owned it. And over the years it would become synonymously tied to his appearance.

"I gave it an opening, and it took it." He draped the jacket over the shoulder plates of their ancestor's armor. "It feeds on negative emotions, and lord knows there's enough to go around here." He grabbed up the burnt scripts. "It wasn't a lot, but it was enough, just enough to lure someone with the right envious and bitter attitude down there." He swiveling the reading lamp from the desk toward him, using the light to study the damage to the browned strips.

"Can it happen again?" She asked worriedly.

"No …" George shook his head in distraction. "I applied more powerful prayer notes, and even then, it over played its hand." He paused a moment. "Now it's licking its wounds, biding its time …" He replied darkly.

"For what?" She took a step closer to him.

The question caused George to halt. To his ever internal objections, he couldn't stop himself from looking into Marigold's eyes. His mind was filled with the prophecy that the mask spoke of and the doom that would follow. He couldn't deny how easy it was to believe the truth spoken in the dark curse that was cast over them. Even now it was so hard to stay away, to not reach out and take her in his arms so desperately. Not when she was so close. One could easily dismiss dark words spoken of a prideful evil, but George couldn't deny the very love that still lived inside him.

Yet, he was not so fully unaware that defying prophecy, changing one's life to spite it, might be exactly the path that leads to the destined event. So, all that he had in his power to do, whither it was true or false, was wait and see. But he did so knowing that it was simply impossible. He was so sure that he could never take Marigold into his arms and into his bed, not now, not ever. No matter how many long nights he dreamt of waking up in the morning and seeing her soft features in the first light of the day, to feel her curled in his arms at peace with the world and safe. They both ever walked a tight rope of strong and uncontrollable emotions. Their souls clenched in fear of one false step in chasing longing and justice for a life-long love born in the innocence of childhood which would lead to a long drop into an abyss that had no end.

His mind flashed to the things the mask had spoken. He saw the images of a figure stalking through the shadows and mists of Grantham County. How it watched his Uncle Tom and mother enter their office, hiding behind a tree counting the times that Lady Edith drove alone on some country road with nothing amiss. But most disturbing of all was the sight of this 'she' the dark figure spoke of. He could see her in flawless silk evening gown, trapping the whole of his family in the dining room, a knife hidden behind this mystery woman's back as she placed the mask over her face. Somehow he saw it so clearly, like it was clear, carved in stone, as if it had already happened. It came to him in the form of some distant memory of the Abbey on fire, his loved ones dead and roasting inside, and the figure in white gown standing in front of it with her hair in the wind, watching.

It should've been enough to deter the power of these lasting feelings …

It should've been a warning that would haunt every interaction he had with the ballerina across from him. But one could not simply turn off a lifetime of longing and love based on bandied words of a fork tongued serpent who dealt in deceit and deception as stock and trade. Nor even in light of the great secret of Lady Edith Crawley, which neither of the two children she loved most in the world could have ever dreamed was possible. Even now both occupants stood ready at a stray touch, a soft word, and the right shimmer of moonlight, to throw it all away for just one last kiss, one last touch. They'd gladly sell the lion share of their family's dignity for one last moment to relive all the unhappy yesterdays which an evening sun set upon with a certainty of a dream of better tomorrows in each other's arms.

"What is it waiting for?"

"A train that don't come."

There was nothing but pain and conflict in George's gruff reply as he walked away from the girl that was tearing him apart with every sacred heartbeat in her pale chest. With a creek, he settled into his father's chair. The weariness of the last two weeks, the fight at the museum, and the things done and said at his home had finally caught up with him. His whole body ached, and there was a great fog that clouded his mind, leaving him groping for a path that was nowhere to be found. All he could hear was a mask's curse and the cruel words that Sybbie had said to him. All he felt was the shame and torment of that which he retaliated with against his only link to his family he had left. The chair creaked again as he slouched back, arm raised on the leather arm rest, forefinger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose. There was no hiding a deep sorrow and shame that fell over him as he still saw the figure of Sybbie sitting in the dark, weeping all alone. Neither could he shield the sight of the beautiful perfection of Marigold in the moonlight.

"George …" He couldn't see Marigold, but he heard a catch in her voice. "Did you …?" She began but stopped.

"Did I what?"

"Did …" She was quiet and sad. "Did you kill her?" She asked softly. "Did you really kill Lillian Bordeaux?" her voice was almost a whisper in the great and terrible anticipation of an answer.

Slowly, with a creak of the chair, George's head lifted off his hand, her question having caught him completely off guard.

Lillian Bordeaux had been a name that George had not heard in many long years. Not even Jonah and the rest of the boys spoke of her. Even when they reminisced about the old days, telling war stories, it was the one name always left out. No one who had been there, that knew her, could find the heart to speak about her, till this day. In truth it seemed wrong that someone so good and pure, kind and sweet, had been made taboo. It was a crime that was only superseded by the great abomination and tragedy of her ever desecrated resting place where she may never be forgotten, but never remembered for whom and what she truly was. All he knew was when the mask spoke of it, the memories, and the vocal recreation of her fateful last moments had sent him into a black rage. It wasn't fitting for it to speak her name, to even think of her, not after what it had done. The simple utterance of that sweet girl took all of the fight out of the young man, his eyes gleaming like broken fragments of a mirror as he stared into the empty darkness of the fireplace.

("Sango's Theme" – [Extended])

"There are many things in my life that I will never discuss with this family, Marigold Crawley. What happened that night would be at the top."

George spoke with a sorrowful voice as he stared into the dark of the empty fireplace. He did not look at her. Apart of him, maybe a masculine part, maybe a part that hardened on the wintry streets of Depression stricken New York, the chain gangs of western Tennessee, or the darkest dungeons of Saltillo. But he could not look at Marigold. He could not show her the vulnerability that was in his eyes. Even in the safety of his father and grandmother's house, in their childhood home, he didn't feel safe to show weakness.

George Crawley had a thousand mile stare into the darkness. His shoulders slumped in an old pain which had aged him greatly in both body and soul. There were no physical scars, no crippled limb. But, none the less, there was a very visible wound that lay deep inside a once valiant heart. It was a wound which no medicine or rest could ever heal, its pain was plain as day in the deep grief that fell upon on a young man's face in sudden memories. It wasn't that Marigold had not earned the right to hear the story. If anything, there was no one on this earth who could understand better than the young ballerina. But it was simply that George couldn't bear to speak of it, not for the sorrow, but the shame and conflict of a single moment's reflex that could not be taken back. But what he was afraid most of all was not blame, but forgiveness. He feared allowing someone to forgive him, when he would never be sure if he or anyone else had that right …

Fore, there was no one left living that could absolve him of one split second reflex made too fast.

A deep quiet filled Crawley House. In George's slumped figure it showed nothing but confusion, sorrow, and suffering of many tragedies. He was filled with many a great fear, which had been proven wrong a millions times. But after the death of a baby sister and a young girl in New Orleans, he was blinded. He had spent too many years alone, sharing drinks with his demons, rather than his victories. There had been too many hardships seen without a comforting hand to tell him that it would be alright. He had built his life on the crumbling pillars of a mother's venomous look one Christmas morning and an Aunt's desperate lie to keep her wanted and loved child close to her. In his trust on these many false beliefs, on the great weight that he put on these things, both pillars had collapsed under him. Now, George Crawley found himself returning to a Downton in a fog of a world in which nothing made sense anymore.

There were tears running down Marigold's cheeks that she couldn't hide. From George's figure in the dark came everything she knew well, for it was how she felt. There was nothing. Her entire life felt empty, felt incomplete. Every day, Granny, Uncle Tom, Sybbie, Aunt Rose, they all told her how happy they were that she was officially apart of the family. A day didn't go by in which someone lovingly kissed her forehead, petted her hair, or rubbed her back. They acted as if this truth was the apex of joy, what they wanted, only dreamed for her all her life. And it should've been. A good girl should've been overjoyed to have the life she had, to be loved so completely. But still, in the night, she cried for the penniless ward of a doting Aunt, fore that girl had all the love and a future that she dreamt of in her saddest and most troubled moments. She dreamt of this house, this room, at this time of the night. With the man she loved sitting in his father's chair, speaking to her of his most guarded secrets, knowing that he loved her enough to place his trust in her. Now, he closed himself off from her, because, he knew that in this new world, she was the heiress of the Marchioness of Hexham, not his Marigold, not his Angel.

There was a deep and shared empathy in emerald eyes as they glassily watched the person they will love forever suffer quietly. She wanted to go to him, to take him in her arms. But still did she flinch at the prospect, knowing his mind, and the fear of just a touch which could cause her to lose all sense of right and wrong. It was hard to hold back, but she only wished for him to know that whatever had happened, she could never hate him for it. There was a whole universe of deeds, tragedies, and mistakes that Marigold Crawley could never hold against George. Fore she knew him, better than he knew himself most days. It was a limitless gallantry which dictated a young man's life that she trusted. George would choose death before dishonor to himself and his principles. And in that certainty, which went down to the very microscopic membranes that constructed the universe inside and outside her being. There was no evil or malice within the heart of this golden Guinevere's most honorable and tormented Lancelot.

But instead of what her heart spoke of her to do, she walked away. Heavy was the heart that would make the short, but hardest, trek back to Downton Abbey. There was nothing left to say. All the words that could have been spoken had been concealed. Now, there was only the business of facing the night and the many melancholy and dreary wandering miles of the mind. Roads that strayed into the realm of 'what could have been' and 'what should've been' that came in the darkest hours of Queen Mab's domain.

They would remain the many midnight ponderings of a young man that sat in his father's chair staring broodingly into an empty fireplace.


Author's Notes

In the business this and last chapter is what we call putting all the cards on the table …

For everyone who is wondering why this story is important, and why it's taking so long to finish this story series in general … I hope last chapter makes it clear where the end of this two year long jont through the Downton Abbey Expanded Universe is heading, and how much I don't want to screw up the landing. Everything, mentioned in four stories has a reason for being there, and when the end comes and everyone goes

"BULL-FUCKIN-SHIT, MATT … How THE HELL … I mean HOW?!"

I'm gonna point directly to this story and say I told you in chapter 2.

Sure this is gonna be a super dense story with a lot of context along the way, but by the end I'll attempt to do something that even Fellows won't have the balls to do in the movie. (Probably for the best though.)