Author's Notes: Moving on to Part 2! Life goes on. Save when it doesn't. Story touches on events in Series 2, Episode 1. Thank you Kind Guest, the formatting should be fixed.

General Warnings: Because this story is set during the early part of the 20th century, be prepared to occasionally run into period typical ableism, racism, sexism, lack of good mental health care or the concept thereof, common childcare concepts we find appalling, classism, and victim blaming. Not to mention different concepts of things like consent. I will try and post specific warnings per chapter!

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and plot in this work belongs to the BBC, Julian Fellows, the wonderful actors and actresses who brought Downton Abbey to life, and a number of other people. This work is produced for entertainment only and no profit is made.

Warnings Ch. 1: Mentions of past sexual assault. Mentions of extensive child abuse and neglect in 19th century Indian Schools in Canada. Period typical racism and sexism. The horrors of warfare. GREVIOUS BODILY HARM featured as war injuries. Minor character death.

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September 1916

Sergeant Nicholas Stewart lay among the dead. Its bulk guarding him, a horse heaved out its last breaths, two of its legs cut away by machinegun fire. It had been out there for two days. Shock should have killed it by now, or blood loss, but somehow it lived. Death dangled before it. Relief, just out of reach. It had squealed and screamed in agony, then a weak whimper every now and then, but for the last ten hours, it just breathed on in labored agony until, too slow to be noticed in the dark and the persistent drizzle, a sharp knife ended its misery.

Stewart waited.

The rain, stubborn and cold, started again. As he'd hoped, it picked up and he lifted his head slightly to get further out of the muck. Near a half-collapsed, defunct twist in the German trenches the French had yet bothered to stuff with men even now that they'd taken it, a figure slithered on its belly up out of a break in the barbed wire. The same figure had, laboriously and with all the crawling speed of an unhasty glacier, removed several sandbags to create a gap near yet another dead horse.

Letting out a breath, Stewart incrementally slipped his rifle out from its oilcloth wrappings. His own legs worked under the sprawled bodies of a skinny English lad, he looked like just another body in the dark. His movements too slow, and too shadowed, to attract attention. He set the barrel up over half-buried corpse of a headless Kraut. Then he put his eye to the sight.

Perhaps no-one would be watching. It was a low and ugly sort of night. The best time for this sort of thing.

Then again. There were always more like him. An hour passed. The rain slacked off. The creeping figure was only a dozen feet from Stewart's position when he saw the glint of a lit cigarette reflecting off of buttons. A moment later his sharp eyes caught the outline of a body draped under a blanket and tucked among tumbled sandbags. The wet black muzzle of the other rifle caught his attention.

A thousand yards. Not a terrific shot for you, I suppose. Then again, you don't have a Whitfield, do you?

Stewart squeezed the trigger of his rifle and waited, unmoving. Amid the jumble of bags there was a jerk, then a scream. The German sniper rose convulsively to his knees, clutching at his neck. Suddenly the air filled with the staccato report of a gun much larger and more energetic than his rifle and the sniper's silhouette began to dance in place as a second and third machinegun joined the fray. Pinioned between his own side's fire and that from the Allied lines behind them, he watched the other man die.

Relaxing slowly amidst the dead, Stewart looked through the piled bodies to where the other man had come to a stop. Two glints of blue, pale and pure, shined back in what little light there was. Stewart winked back, wondering if the other man could see it for a moment, dark as he was in the darkness. One of the blue lights went out briefly and then relit. Stewart allowed himself to let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Bursts and bits of fire still carried on up and down the lines.

There'd be no more crawling for a while. Possibly until the sun had risen and set again. Stewart settled in to wait. All around them the rottenest place on the Western front carried on rotting.

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"It's disrespectful, is what it is."

"I don't see anything wrong with it." Daisy, half-obscured by William's broader frame, commented before ducking away from the redheaded maid's fierce glare. "I mean, I ain't never seen or heard Midori be rude, and she's just doing her job, innit she?"

"Isn't she, Daisy."

"That what I asked, Mrs. Patmore. You think she's been alright, don't you?"

"I think you'd better mind yourself and pluck that pheasant for the master's table if you don't want to find yourself with bigger problems than worrying about how things are done at Loxley."

Mrs. Patmore held in an exasperated smile and turned it into a glare. Seeing the girl applying herself hastily to her task by the sink, she felt free to make her own comments as she applied herself to the mixing of the dough for the oyster vol-au-vents.

"I think that after two years of being told to go rot, a lot of progress' been made and some people shouldn't stir up trouble they've no right to be involved in to begin with."

"And I'd say people who don't venture out of the kitchen should keep their attention on their stoves and leave judgement to those better placed to make it." O'Brian shot back, her small eyes sharp and angry.

"And I believe that's quite enough. Ah, there you are, William."

Mrs. Patmore's head had come up to respond but was unsurprised to see Mr. Carson's lined face tight with stress. She clucked under her breath and caught Daisy's eye, gesturing with her head to where the butler was towering over the proceedings. The war had thrown some pain and damage at them all, but the grand old oak was listing in the wind a bit these days with the stress of trying to pretend nothing had changed in the running of Downton.

"Yes, Mr. Carson?" William ventured.

The boy came to attention like he was a solider already. As if being a soldier was a good idea to begin with. Beryl held in her fear for her nephew and all the other young men who'd hied themselves off for God and Country and carried on with her dough. You'd think men so wise as to get into the government would have had better sense than think war was the right sort of idea. Not that it was Britain's fault that this horrid thing had started or gone on as long as it had. If Germany had just been willing to listen and left poor, valiant little Belgium alone, well, they'd be living in a better world, wouldn't they?

"Mr. Carson," O'Brian interrupted gamely, moving from where she'd been very unwillingly pressed into service tidying the edges on some table linens. "don't you agree that Lady Grantham's been put through the worst sort of indignity with her grandson? Making her stand there under supervision like some paroled criminal in front of a China-woman, no less."

Mr. Carson, who'd opened his mouth to say something to William, shot O'Brian a look that could only be called the oddest combination of censorious and martyred that Beryl had ever seen on the man's face. She spared a second to wonder what Mrs. Hughes eyes might say about that look.

"O'Brian."

Everyone froze, save for Beryl and Daisy. Mrs. Patmore exchanged a brief, telling look with the girl as Lady Sybil stepped out from behind Carson wearing an expression of thunderous offense.

"Lady Sybil." Her mother's maid looked at her for a moment, then stood a touch staller. "I'm sorry if my words offend you, but your mother-."

"Mama knows all too well that anything to do with my sister's son is Lady Strallan's decision, and she'd hate to think anyone's unsolicited opinions were threatening our reconciliation." Lady Sybil shot back, interrupting without a second thought.

The redhead's lips nearly vanished, they pressed so hard against one another as she was forced to accept the set-down from the young woman standing before her.

"Of course, Lady Sybil."

The young lady's blue eyes held the older woman's for a moment, then she stepped forward and dismissed O'Brian with all the grace nature had given her.

"Mama was looking over some magazines from New York that Grandma Martha sent her. I'm sure she'd enjoy your opinion if you've the time."

"If I'm no longer going to be called upon to tend the linens, certainly, my lady."

"Yes, go ahead, if none of the other maids have time to see to it, I will after supper." Beryl shot back, knowing very well she wouldn't.

"Oh, why don't I help?"

Lady Sybil's words stopped everything but O'Brian's hasty exit.

"Lady Sybil, surely-." The Butler began, his expression pained, but the young woman's earnest face shone as she stepped forward towards the things spread out on the cramped little corner table.

"It's no trouble, Carson, and it would feel wonderful to be of some use to someone." She dimpled. "You can't deny that Mama at least made us all learn how to sew. I promise not to let my mind wander and leave the hems unsightly, or embroider daisies at the corners again. Please?"

And just like that, Mrs. Patmore found her kitchen invaded worryingly, but couldn't be mad for it. Especially watching that helpless expression on the butler's face. Thankfully, Mr. Carson wasn't quite beat. Beryl didn't know how she'd get the dinner done with one of the ladies sitting in the corner!

"That is very kind of you, Lady Sybil, and we thank you." Carson immediately stepped forward even as he sent William from the room with a nod. "I'll carry them up to your room personally."

"Oh, that's not necessary!"

"Nonsense, my lady. Now, surely we don't owe the pleasure of your presence to the linens?"

"Oh no! It's just, I think the bell's out in my room again? I've rung a few times and, well…"

She shrugged gracefully and Carson, looking pained, led the way out of the kitchen and into the Servant's Hall, carrying the neatly bundled linens and trailed by Lady Sybil. Once there, the tall man reached out and tapped at the bell marked for the young lady's room. Though the bell itself jittered merrily back and forth, no sound emerged. William stooped down and picked something from the floor. Elevated as it was, pinched between his forefinger and thumb, the bell's clapper glinted dully.

"Well, that solves it then." Sybil smiled. "Carson, can I borrow William when he's done with whatever you've put him to?"

"Of course Lady Sybil, but… may I ask why?"

"Oh, there's garden snakes coming out of the ceiling in my room. That's why I wanted to sew in the kitchen."

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"Hey, red man!"

"Monture!"

"Où allez-vous?"

"Ne m'ignore pas, salaud! Sauvage fils de pute, viens ici!"

It didn't occur to either of the men leaning against the side of truck that they were being addressed. One was a Major in the English Army. The cause or likelihood of a group of Canadian privates yelling insults at him was minor. Having just received mail, both of the Englishmen were more occupied in its contents than by thoughts of their allies from the Great White North. They had greater concerns.

The truck currently being refueled was their main ticket back to their destination. If they weren't in such a tearing hurry, things would have looked substantially up. The trenches were behind them and they were going to Paris. Unfortunately, they were going to Paris with the dreadfully urgent information that the Major in question had gone into the trenches in a German uniform to get.

As it was, given their hurry, Major Anthony Strallan carefully stowed the small pile of letters that had been sent during his ten-day foray behind enemy lines inside his shirt. His vest protected the letters from the layers of filth and sweat adhering to his skin. The shirt protected them from the compacted dirt embedded in his jacket. Intelligence was generally considered dirty work, beneath a gentleman, but Anthony hadn't anticipated it would play out so literally. He'd gotten out of the blasted, dangerous uniform as soon as he and Stewart had managed the trickiest bit of the whole mess – getting back through their own lines. Unfortunately, the cleanest thing available to him at the front hadn't been much better than the dead man's uniform he'd crawled across No Man's Land in.

Ah well, he had something cleaner available in Paris. He'd even be able to bathe. There would be a hot meal waiting. He could write to Edith in peace after debriefing. As the screams of the dead and the ever-present smoke, darkness, and misery of it all weighed down on him, he gripped tightly to that. It was the little things you had to focus on, so it couldn't bury you. Soon he'd be able to write to Edith. He could read her letters. He'd know his son's latest words. There might even, with incredible luck, be a new photograph.

"Merde, Soldat Monture, écoute quand je t'appelle!"

Beside him, Stewart was leaning against the truck as well, sucking greedily on a freshly lit cigarette. His batman had received his own letters, though notably fewer in number. He'd also received a hearty tin of cigarettes he was now sampling from greedily.

Neither man expected a beefy, frustrated, Canadian Corporal to stride out of the milling masses of men and seize Anthony's valet by the shoulder.

"What the-." Stewart bit out around the cigarette even as his mostly closed eyes snapped open, wide and angrily at the sudden assault on his person. Anthony, however, was already in motion. Even as the Canadian gave every indication that he intended to drag Stewart to attention physically, Anthony was stepping forward, his height and the breadth of his shoulders enough to push the interloper back a step, and his rank insignia and uniform giving the man pause.

"Arrêt!" Anthony took a breath and prepared to go on, but the man had taken a step back, and his own apology overlapped the precise, fluid, French diction Anthony had to offer.

"Apologies, sir!" The Canadian Corporal spoke quickly. "This one's one of mine, though, and he's AWOL on top of it. Hospital my right eye, injured men don't stand by some truck and smoke, do they, Monture? Where'd you get the uniform and what the hell gives you the right-."

Anthony watched as his batman's jaw clenched in anger, but a quick flicker of the dark eyes towards his gave him the chance to minutely shake his head. Let me handle this.

"The man you're manhandling, Corporal, is my batman, and I'd thank you to take a second look before you spoke." Anthony allowed the exhausted, frustrated man facing them an out. "I don't doubt mistakes can be made beneath the dirt we're all wearing."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but it's you's making the mistake." The Canadian man, voice heavy with anger and lightly touched by a Quebecois accent – working class, from the southern area, likely around the lakes – didn't back down. "I've had this useless Iroquois lump for six months and he's been nothing but grief since. I was told he'd gotten it a bad way days ago, but if he's impersonating-."

"Corporal," Anthony shot his own voice out, sharpening his accent like a sword and drawing it sharply over each word, "I have had the pleasure of my valet's employ since the last trouble in South Africa and now he serves as my batman. So, if you'd kindly take a step back and stop doubting me at my word, Sergeant Stewart and I have business in Paris."

The Corporal stared at that point, his eyes cutting between Anthony and where Stewart stood, stiff as a board, face completely unreadable, hands relaxed at his side. The blond man had seen the sharp sparks in Stewart's eyes, however, at the vulgar slur thrown at him. It's crassness had not likely moved Stewart, but it's accuracy likely would have. When was the last time he heard the word Iroquois, not counting his own lips? Not since he slipped on that ship in Nova Scotia. God, how many years, he'd not have been a day over fifteen?

"But – I – sir, he looks -." The other man shook his head and turned, yelling something at another private. The young Canadian was staring at Stewart, pale-faced and shaken. Finally the Corporal looked back and shook his head. "Merde. Right then. Pardon, Major."

"Major, we're full up and ready to go!" The truck's driver yelled at him as the door on the opposite side of the truck's cab slammed resoundingly.

"It's not my pardon you need, but you have it." Anthony stepped aside, moving towards the back of the truck and trusting that Stewart would stay in his shadow and move just as quickly. "Keep your head down."

"Keep your head, period, sir!"

He wasn't wrong. A moment later they were at the back of the truck and Stewart had taken the initiative, however inappropriate in terms of rank, to reach up for the hands of the other men in the back, seizing two and getting one foot up on the rough metal bar welded across the back. A heave later and Stewart was safely inside. Anthony nodded to himself and reached up both his own hands, careful with his grip as always, and got a foot up to haul himself inside as well. He noted, dryly, that his wasn't the only groan of effort lost in the sputtering clank of the engine's start. Even with the weight he'd lost, he wasn't exactly light.

By mutual agreement, neither man commented as they left the wayward Canadian behind.

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"Forgetting they want you back in London anyway, man, I want you to stop at the Hospital. Bloody Hell, man, how much weight have you lost?"

"Injury and illness remain the best way in, sir. The medics have bigger problems than figuring out if I'm as German as I sound."

Stewart stood at attention in the back of the room. He'd already answered the usual questions. When waiting for his officer, he saw things. That, as well as seeing the baronet back alive, was part of his duty.

"That doesn't mean we actually want you expiring, Strallan, you're entirely too useful."

The harried colonel rubbed a hand over his cleanly shaven face and looked around him at the endless maps and encrypted messages piled neatly around the cramped room or tacked to walls. They'd settled in a basement in an obscure part of the city, away from the official headquarters of British Army Intelligence. One never knew when their counterparts were about and it was critical Anthony not been seen moving about in such areas.

"The weight loss was intentional, sir."

"Regardless…" The balding man turned away from Anthony and towards his batman. Stewart came to even stricter attention. "Sergeant?"

"Sir?"

"See the Major makes it to the hospital directly from here."

"Yes, Colonel, sir."

It was a sign just how exhausted he was that Sir Anthony didn't protest the brusque manor he was sent off, or his destination. Stewart wouldn't pretend to be less than relieved. He had… less loyalty to England itself than he might, and less fondness for empires and governments than many. Sir Anthony, however, had earned a loyalty that was more enduring. Stewart hadn't been happy with the baronet's plan to fake dysentery to get taken back by the German medics, but it had been a sight better than the initial plan. Idiot generals. One did not simply walk into German trenches because one spoke the language. (1)

Despite the low-voiced complaining across four languages, Stewart had more leverage than he had ever had before when it came to persuading his employer to make the best possible decision. The stubbornness beneath his employer's amiable, kind, exterior was gargantuan. It was also useless. The words, "I'd hate to worry Lady Strallan, sir", were as effective as a red-hot poker to a cow's behind. It didn't improve Sir Anthony's mood to be threatened with a bit of epistolary tattling, but it did earn his complete and total cooperation.

"Three weeks leave, counted when you get back home, hopefully you've got a wife to fatten you up." The surgeon was implacable and his glare so nasty it was chlorinated as he jabbed a finger into Sir Anthony's visible ribs and gestured to the clean and pressed uniform jacket, shirt, and vest Stewart had neatly accepted and folded. "Now get your clothes back on and take your orders."

"I-."

"You're nearly fifty bloody years old, Major, you should know better than this. Your body can't take this kind of abuse and recover from it with any speed, especially in this hellish nightmare. Christ, your records say you've got a baby at home! Next time you need a medical excuse, ask one of us. One of us needs to write you sneaks a bleeding book if you're going to keep this us."

Stewart watched as duty crumbled with the promise of home. Stewart himself felt the pull of it and sent thanks towards whatever listened behind the stars. Where his officer went, he went. Home. Three weeks in heaven after tangling with the Devil in High Wood.

"Actually, a book on how to fake certain illnesses that won't result in unnecessary surgery, amputation, painful treatment, or isolation would be very useful." Anthony was still working, however, and the taller man looked at the doctor with real appreciation. "I'll make sure you get credit when I send it up the line."

Stewart covered a cough as they left the exasperated doctor behind. The sprawling hospital had once been an elegant mansion. In better days, it had been a ballroom. The very sort, Stewart noted, that the baronet might have taken his wife to. The man had lamented how Edith had seen so little of the world when they were courting. Before the joint inconveniences of war and elopement overcame them, he'd even mused about where they would go on a proper honeymoon, mentally revisiting his own continental travels.

Now? Lines of beds filled with what was left of the proud youth of The Empire lay in rows of fading torment. The ballroom was bedlam. The chandeliers hung witness to the agonies that sat at the bottom of civilization instead of its supposed crown.

The pelting orderlies scrambling towards them with stretchers didn't care for where they'd been or what they were thinking. All that mattered was that Sir Anthony and Stewart removed themselves from their path. Flattened against the wall, both men exchanged an awkward look. Stewart nodded towards an open door, barely visible through the bustle of nurses, doctors, and injured men in the ballroom ward they'd ducked into. Considering the stream of stretchers rushing down the main hallway, it seemed the best course to take, no matter how much pardon had to be begged in the process.

Just shy of their escape, a weak grip on Stewart's trousers halted him. Turning, he reached out automatically to clasp the hand reaching out. Mid-turn, he bent his knees and waist so he could better look the injured man in the face as he spoke to him. Then time stopped.

"Stewart, what's the…."

Sir Anthony's words drowned in a gasp, and Stewart couldn't be sure if it was the baronet's or his own. He was too rooted in place to look. It was hard to move when you were caught by a strange hand, staring down into your own face.