A/N: OOPS I DID IT AGAIN. God, am I in some kind of weird funk because it's almost the end of Downton forever?

Or am I just evil?


1885

Miss Hughes, he'd said. And he'd forgotten her first name — blast. A few strides ahead of her, headed for the housekeepers' sitting room where he was to deposit her, he wracked his brain.

Annie, maybe?

No, no. She didn't look like an Annie.

Her smile was too wide.

He'd only known dower girls named Annie. One of whom had been a girlfriend of Griggs — the miserable bastard — and she'd been all legs. A dancer, decked in sequins and smelling of musty velvet, standing outside the stage door taking a long drag off a cigarette she'd plucked from the case of an awe-struck usher boy.

Lucy?

No, no — good God, no.

He'd've remembered that.

One of his favorite horses, tended to by his father and himself when he was a stable boy, had been named Lucy. Sleek and black — and fast. He'd broken that horse in. The last time he cried had been when he was sixteen, a second footman, and the groom told him he'd had to shoot the old girl. She'd taken a bad fall, broken her leg. He'd love that horse.

He felt his palms begin to sweat as they neared the door; Elodie? That didn't seem quite right.

Oh, blast! He'd look a fool introducing her and not recalling her bloody Christian name.

No, no — it wasn't Elodie.

Though he had heard of an Elodie — she'd been a guest of His Lordship's at a dinner a fortnight or so ago. She'd been a Duchess, he thought. French woman. Very beautiful, draped in Paris' finest fashions. More jewels than Her Ladyship, though he'd done well not to take notice of that.

At the same moment he raised his hand to rap on the door, the housekeeper opened it — startled to see them there.

"Ah!" she said, "You're the new head housemaid — Elsie Hughes, yes?"

Elsie, Charles said under his breath.

"I'm early, I know but Mr Carson was —"

"Early's better than late," the old woman chuckled, "Come in, come in."

He watched as she disappeared into the sitting room, turning back and giving him a small smile, "Thank you Mr. Carson."

"Welcome to Downton — Elsie."

He turned on his heels heading back down the hallway, a slight spring in his step.

He'd never known an Elsie before.


1925

"Next stop, Scarborough."

Charles sputtered, blinking awake.

He'd fallen asleep on the train.

Blast, he thought.

She turned to him in the dark of the car, her face periodically illuminated as the train sped on, moonlight passing through the trees in the hedgerows of the tracks. She smiled sleepily at him.

"Hello," she whispered, her tongue wetting her lips — parched from the stagnant air of the compartment.

"I'm showing my age," he sighed, fumbling for his pocket watch. It was just after midnight.

"No," she laughed gently, "It's the train — always lulls me, too."

"Did you steal a few winks?"

She shrugged, tugging at her earring, "I'm no thief, Mr Carson."

"Well, you've stolen something from me."

She blinked, her lips parting slightly.

He laughed, reaching over and letting his hand settle upon her knee.

"Dashing away with a smoothing iron, she stole my heart away. . ." he sang in a whisper, picking her hand up and bringing it softly to his lips, kissing her fingers gently.

She blushed, "I'd rather think I'm merely holding it for safekeeping." She laughed, touching her hand to her hip — her chatelaine handed off and starkly missing from her side.

"And I yours," he said, "And if you harbor any hesitations, I'll have you know that in all my years at Downton I have never once shattered a glass. Dinged a few — for I am only mortal—but none that could not be repaired."

She smiled, "Steady hands, steady heart."

"Yes," he said, ducking his chin to find her gaze, "And a beautiful woman once took my hand in the sea and told me that, if at any time I did not feel thusly, I may take hers in order to be steadied."

She bit her lip prettily, the train pitching forward slightly as it began to approach the platform. As it slowed, Charles sighed in kind.

"Is the innkeeper expecting us quite so late?" she said, craning her neck to look out the window of the train car.

"When I made the reservation she assured me it was not a problem in the least," he said, petting her hand reassuringly.

She turned to him, her eyes sparkling, "Whose name did you put the reservation under?"

His cheeks pinked and he laughed lightly, "Mr and Mrs Carson, of course. I hope that's agreeable?"

"Certainly," she said, "But I really should prefer it if, for tonight, you'd call me by my Christian name."

The train lurched to a stop and he gripped her hand, "Well," he said quietly, leaning over to kiss her cheek, "Welcome to Scarborough, Elsie."


1945

They'd married in the spring — he could still smell the scent of the white heather in her bouquet, the petals of spring flora drifting around them, kicked up by a breeze.

He could feel the softness of her small, warm hand in his. Feel the nice little pain of his mouth stretching in a wide grin.

It was a day like that. A whispering wind rattling through the trees (and he almost heard her in them), the scent of heather in the wreaths laid upon the grass at her headstone. The warmth of the earth in his hand as he let it fall, tapping against the casket.

Six feet away.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been six feet away from her.

In the twenty years of their marriage, and twenty years before that, she'd been at his side.

A respectful distance, perhaps, but never quite so far. Never so out of reach.

Never a ghost.

He struggled to stand and felt arms lifting him up.

Blast, he thought.

He didn't want these people to remember him as a decrepit, heartbroken old sod.

He blustered, tried to push them off — but he leaned upon them.

She wouldn't want him to fight their kindness.

They mean well, Charles, she said from somewhere inside of his memory. Like how he'd heard the voices on the wireless.

Disembodied — but reassuring.

Someone settled him into a waiting chair and he sagged, the voice of the preacher continuing on.

Dust to dust.

He bit back a laugh.

She'd hate that.

An eternity of dust.

He frowned, looking at her headstone, practically hidden by floral arrangements brought from every corner of Yorkshire.

But he didn't need to see the engraving.

He knew what it said by heart, having scribbled it simply on an envelope at the masonry:

Elsie Hughes Carson

1862-1945

Beloved wife, kind soul.

Next to it his name with a missing date.

When it was only him, the Bates' waiting patiently on the path for him to leave her, he rested his hand atop the cool granite, his eyes fluttering closed, listening for his name on her lips and the wind.

I can't believe I forgot her name, he thought — a memory so long ago it yet part of him, engraved like a sentiment on stone.

Her bright face in the doorway.

The lilt of his name on her tongue.

The way her slender, gloved hands so prettily held the strings of her hatboxes

(and then, later, her sherry glass in his pantry.

Later, a bouquet of white heather on a spring day.

Later, grazing his cheek).

Elsie, he whispered, the name not a name, but a sound. The sound of dog happily trotting across wet leaves, of a child humming as she buckles shoes, of coffee percolating and her laughter muffled in the bedclothes.

Elsie, he said, a little louder then.

He'd never known an Elsie before.

He listened harder, heard the rustling of the trees.

The shuffling of feet on the dirt path.

Somewhere, in the distance, birdsong that he knew she would have whistled back to.

He touched his fingertips to his lips, then lowered them shaking to the stone.

"I hope you'll be there to welcome me when I join you," he said, "I don't know where you are, or where I'll find you again one day, but I know that I will." He sighed, stuffing his hand into the pocket of his trousers to warm it, "I'd know you anywhere."