Hello again! I'm back with another fanfic. The quarantine was unsurprisingly extended where I live and I need something to keep myself sane. Anyone planning to rewatch DA ? - because I sure am. Anyway, I really hope you all like this. Enjoy!
Please read end note!
~ Prologue ~
Cora Crawley likes to remind herself that time heals all wounds, but she's constantly reminded instead that it never really gets easier. The hours, the days, the weeks, the months, and the years, they all pass but still she remains. There is no change in the weather or turn in the season that helps ebb away the sharp pain of losing the man she loves. She has always prided herself on being a strong woman, but it is the cruel hands of fate that had broken her. It's all been so unfortunate really - a series of unfortunate events, if there was ever such a thing.
She'd been visiting her parents in New York - a trip planned for months - her three daughters in tow, and she'd been assured repeatedly by her husband that he very much intends to follow. He had been held up at work, running a company has never really been easy and she'd understood that. She believed him, and he had indeed tried to get to her, to follow her to the United States. He had given her a call when he'd boarded the plane, telling her he'd missed her and that he couldn't wait to see her. She'd told him the same. It had seemed mundane, then, something completely ordinary. After all, they'd flown to many places - often together, sometimes separately - and it had been routine at that point.
It had been his own hapless luck - a flapping of a butterfly's wing, a ripple in time, a turn of fate. His plane had crashed somewhere in the transatlantic journey, crashed into a coast in England, and there were only a small number of survivors, some of the body had been left unfound. Her husband had been one among those that had remained missing despite the lengthy and extensive search, up until such time that there was no choice left but to declare him dead despite the fact that there had been no body.
There had been a funeral, held at his parents' estate in Grantham, attended by the rest of their family. His parents, her parents, their children, his sister and her husband, their friends, and all their friends had been in attendance, commemorating what - to her - had been nothing but an empty casket. It's supposed to make them feel better, bring them closure, but home, she'd wondered often, when the only thing that can bring her comfort and make her feel better was lost to her?
She'd barely shed tears as they lowered the coffin to the ground, and she had felt so oddly detached and unemotional. The tears had come, later that night, when she'd had to sleep in the large bed, his side so heartbreakingly empty.
She'd tried to hold on to hope though, despite everything, tried to keep faith burning in her heart that he's still alive somewhere, washed up on some shore in some distant place where there was no one who knew him, but even the strongest of flames turned into embers through the passage of time.
She'd kept the home fires burning for almost two years, hoping, waiting for his return, clinging to the ruins of this broken home, but two years have passed and still nothing. She feels as though the hope she's tried to keep alive have toppled over, the ashes blown by the wind. Two years is a very long time to hope for the dead to turn up undead and hoping have only brought her more heartache than she can carry and she can't keep doing it to herself, no.
But still...there are little traces of him, little traces that are proof of his existence bringing sweet ache into her heart. There is something bittersweet about seeing him in every corner of their home, the ghost of his memory haunting her at every step.
It isn't like she hasn't tried. At the advice of her own children, she'd tried to spend time away from home, away from the fragments of the life she's once held in her grasp but are now slipping through her fingers like sand. Still, nothing. He is etched in her mind like a lifelong memory.
Loving him has been what she's always known to do, she no longer remembers how to stop.
Tears find their way down her cheek even when she doesn't want them to, her heart breaking over and over again. The world seems so dull without her husband, without his love.
"Oh, Robert," she murmurs as she sits on the bed, his picture in her hand. Her cheeks are wet with her tears as she mourns the love she can't quite let go. "If you're alive, please come home to me."
Every night, every day, like a prayer she asks him to come home.
Every night, every day, he fails.
. . . . .
The knock on her front door that comes in the early hours of Tuesday isn't quite a welcome one. She has half the mind to turn away whoever it is, but good manners prevailed over her own discomfiture, and so she had, despite herself, crossed her threshold and opened the door.
Her brows furrow as she stares back at the person in front of her. There is a woman standing in front of her home, looking so very nervous that Cora fears she might actually faint. Cora's sure she's never seen the woman before, but if Cora is honest and vain enough, she'd say the woman reminds her of herself, maybe only a couple years younger. Blue eyes stare up at her with intent and a bit of fear, and Cora feels her heart jump up to her throat. She doesn't quite feel right.
"Hello," Cora greets politely. "How may I help you?"
The other woman opens her mouth to speak but words seem to desert her. She closes her mouth quickly, and Cora shifts on her foot to lean back against her door. There's something about the other woman that Cora can't quite put a finger on.
"Are you alright dear?" Cora asks, trying again to get the girl to say something. At the very least, a name.
"I uh," the other woman manages to choke out, but then she looks to the ground and breathes deeply. She offers a trembling hand to Cora. "My name is Jane Moorsum."
Cora looks at the woman and nods, taking the proffered hand with a modicum of interest and confusion. She really doesn't know this Jane. "Pleasure to meet you," she murmurs, shaking the trembling hand. "I'm Cora Crawley."
Cora could have sworn that Jane pales even more at the sound of her name. Curious.
"Yes, I know," Jane says, and Cora wonders how, but she doesn't say anything. "I'm here because of your husband, Robert Crawley."
At that moment, Cora isn't certain if she's hearing correctly or her mind is playing tricks on her again.
Cora swallows and shakes her head. "My husband...he's dead," she mutters, wanting nothing more than to get this over with. She's tired of giving herself hope only to have it snatched away from her cruelly. She wants her husband alive more than anything, but her heart can't take cruel jokes. Her heart isn't that strong. "He's been dead for almost two years."
The look on the other woman's face is unreadable - drifting from relief to remorse to panic to defeat. Cora understands the state though not the reason, for she too had gone through a myriad of emotions all at once many times in her life.
"That's ," a pause, a breath, and a heartbeat, "that's not quite…" Cora's ears are ringing and she wants the other woman - this Jane - to stop, but the words pull at her until they are all she hears. "Robert is alive, Mrs. Crawley."
Anger bubbles up inside Cora. This is not...she can't hear lies if they are all that these words are in the end. "Please don't -" Cora is gracious enough for the door she's leaning on because she feels her knees go weak. She might faint, she thinks, as her fingers hold the doorknob in a death grip. She can feel her stomach turn over and she feels a bit light headed. "This isn't funny."
"I'm not laughing," Jane tells her with all seriousness, and Cora is hard pressed to find amusement in the other woman's eyes - there is none. "He's alive and he's here in Grantham, with me." Jane bites down on her lip. "If you'd like to see him," is added as an afterthought.
Cora feels the whirlwind of emotions overflowing inside her. She isn't quite sure what she should feel first: fear, excitement, disbelief, relief, grief, or happiness. Everything is quite a blur.
And then there's only darkness as she loses consciousness and almost falls on the floor of her porch, saved only by Jane's quick reflexes.
Robert is alive, is her last thought before everything turns black.
Sorry, sorry. I Knooowww,, I just want to say that *yes, i know - another amnesia fic wow*. I honestly would understand if you guys don't even want to read this because we all know I have another amnesia fic that's taking me a bajillion years to update, but I have to be honest, I really do enjoy this trope A LOT. And I have been torturing myself with this idea for a while now that I thought it only fair to do the same to you lol anyway, at least now you can have it both ways. Cora and Robert BOTH lost their memories in my fics so there's that. There will also be similarities in the other fic, I can't possibly help that. Amnesia fics are all generally the same if you think about it and there are only so many ways that I can write this. Feel free to not read the fic if that is something you can't deal with.
I just want to say thank you also to everyone who has been here with me since beginning of time. I suck at updating I know, but thank you for being there anyway. You guys have been so wonderful to me. In these hard times, please know that I am her for you too. If you need someone to talk to, send me an ask on tumblr, send me a message here, leave a comment just to talk about your experiences and your fears or whatever you guys want to talk about. We are a family here and I want everyone to know that you aren't walking through these tough times alone.
LastlIf you're *good*, you might get an update soon. Y'all know what to do!