Matthew doesn't wake up until the next morning. He blinks, his eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight streaming into the library. Mary is sitting across from him in an armchair, a book across her lap. She is dressed in a simple blue dress but her hair is only braided, not up, and she looks more casual than he has ever seen her.
"Good morning," he murmurs as he pushes himself up into a seated position on the couch.
"Good morning," Mary replies, smiling benignly over her book. "How are you this morning?"
Matthew shrugs. "Rather hungry, I think." He remembers half a sandwich on the train the day before, but he hasn't eaten since then and his stomach is growling.
Mary nods. "I'll tell Daisy to prepare you a tray."
"How is she?" Matthew asks. "Really. I know William's death must be hard on her, God knows it is on me. Poor girl."
"I think..." Mary begins, pondering her words carefully. "I think that she is struggling, but she is happy to get away and be here so that she can recover."
Matthew leans his head back on the couch. "Thank her for coming. And tell her I'm absolutely delighted to be consuming what she makes for us."
Here he is, the old Matthew she knew.
Mary has to hide the grin that threatens to consume her face. "I'll do that. Would you... like to talk to her at any point? About William?"
He considers the idea, pressing his lips together and diverting his eyes away from Mary's. "Maybe. Not now, I think something like that would end with both of us in tears. But when I'm ready, and when she's ready." He pauses thoughtfully, then continues. "I miss him, Mary. I miss him so much."
"I know you do."
He manages to consume everything on his breakfast tray, something he hasn't been able to do since he was wounded. He eats everything greedily; the eggs, the toast, the tea. He usually had a hard time working up any sort of appetite thanks to the pain medication he had been prescribed, but he is so hungry this morning, that hardly matters at all.
"You're feeling better, I take it?" Mary asks, watching as he takes the last sip of his second cup of tea.
Matthew shrugs. "Hungry, at least. Less exhausted, maybe."
"Good," Mary says, taking the tray from beside him over to a table at the edge of the room. "Dr. Warren is going to come by today, probably around noon. Is there anything you'd like to do before then?"
Matthew nods. "Take a bath, if that's possible." He hasn't bathed, really bathed, since his last leave before his injury. Sponge baths in the hospital had been fine to remove the dirt and grime that war had caked onto his skin, but he never quite felt truly clean after them.
"There's no bathroom on this level, but I'll see what we can do."
"I'm sure I can manage up the stairs," Matthew says, reaching for his crutches.
"I'm not sure that's the wisest idea."
Matthew sighs. "It can't be that difficult, can it? I know I'm a little bit unsteady but I can manage. Really, I'd like to have an actual bedroom as well. We can figure it out."
Mary doesn't indicate it, but her heart flutters at his use of 'we'.
She watches as he stands up, ready to jump in and steady him if he needs it. He doesn't; he manages to stand up stably and move toward her. "See, I managed," he says proudly.
"Well, I guess we need to try out some stairs then," Mary says, observing him carefully as he hobbles across the library. She opens the door for him and he makes his way out, coming to the foot of a wide flight of stairs.
"How are we going to do this?" he asks, half to himself.
Mary stares at the stairs, pressing her lips together. "I'll be right here if you lose your balance."
He almost smiles. "I certainly hope I won't fall on you."
"I'm here in case you do."
Tentatively, he place his crutches on the first step. He puts his good foot on the step, one hand on the railing and manages to pull himself up without losing his balance. "That's not too bad," he says. He manages a few more steps, Mary behind him all the way. "I think I can do it, I just probably won't want to do it any more than I have to."
"That's fair," Mary says, still looking on with a concerned eye.
He eventually makes it to the top, almost running into Isobel.
"Matthew! What are you doing up here?" she asks, her mouth rounded into a shape of surprise.
He smiles sheepishly, and Mary can see the young lawyer she once new in the lines by his eyes. "I need a bath. A real one, in a real tub."
"Let's see what we can do then," Isobel says, coming by her son to help as he makes his way down the hall.
Mary stands behind on the stairs and watches.
Fresh, clean, and full of Daisy's delicious cooking, Matthew finds himself in bed in his relatively large new bedroom. "Doctor Warren should be here soon. After that, though, you should take a nap," Isobel says, sitting in a chair next to the bed.
"I slept pretty much all of yesterday," Matthew protests, although weakly. He is tired; the stairs took a lot out of him and his eyelids feel droopy.
Isobel gives him a motherly glare. "You will take a nap, Matthew. Your body needs it."
He knocks his head against the headboard in frustration and immediately regrets it; his concussion is mostly healed but a pounding headache begins to manifest itself, an unpleasant reminder.
"I know this is hard," Isobel continues.
Matthew stares out the window next to his bed. Scotland is beautiful, Scotland is lovely and green and miles away from France, and he has to concentrate on the beauty outside his window or he will fall back to France. He can feel the pounding inside his head turn to a pounding anger towards his mother, towards his words. Intellectually, he knows she means well, but she can't possibly understand, and the fact that she pretends to angers him. "Do you? Do you really?" he murmurs, his fist clenched. This is so irrational, he tells himself, so ridiculous, but nothing helps. His head pounds, his legs ache, his shoulders sting from the work of hauling himself around on crutches, and his mind betrays him at every step, telling what is real and what is not, but being oh so wrong. How can his mother possibly understand?
"You're hurting, both physically and emotionally. But you can heal. We're going to help you heal, but you have to let us help."
She is so rational, and he can't stand it. There are so many thoughts rushing through his brain, and he knows which ones he should listen to. 'She loves you.' 'She means well.' 'She knows exactly what she's doing, she's a nurse.' But he can't focus on those thoughts. The ones that overwhelm him are horrific visions of France, things that he can never unsee and that his mother could never imagine. How could she heal him from that when she has no idea what he has seen, no idea what he has been through.
The anger is irrational, but he is utterly irrational, unable to focus on what his mind knows is true but his broken soul cannot accept. "You can't!" he yells. The words coming out of his mouth are loud and horrible but the sane parts of his brain are not strong enough to override it. "You have no idea, no idea at all what I went through over there, what I've seen, the people I killed... I killed people, Mother, and I felt no remorse because that was what I was supposed to do and then I did it and they told me I was a good soldier, they promoted me for it. And now this is my punishment, and so it's pointless! You can't heal me, I don't deserve to be healed!"
Isobel tries to hide it, but she is shocked and unsure of how to respond. A small part of Matthew feels glee at this, shocking his nearly imperturbable mother, but most of him is just breaking down, with angry sobs and broken cries.
Everything, rationality and irrationally, sanity and insanity, love and hatred, unhappiness and acceptance... it all battles inside him and the bubble breaks.
But not enough.
There is very little catharsis in this, he realizes, as the sobs come to a close. He is still broken, still empty, still so very angry.
But his mother, his mother who can handle nearly anything life throws at her...
She cannot handle this.
He can't put her through this.
He has to push these battles down, keep them on the inside. They are what he deserves, but he cannot let his mother fight them for him. He doesn't want her to be broken too.
"It's alright, Matthew," she is saying, and she rubs his back gently. She is clearly still perturbed, but desperately fighting to hide it.
He acquiesces to her touch and tries to empty his mind of the dark thoughts that overtook. An empty mind is better than a broken one. He relaxes, and his tears begin to fall away, and no more come to replace them.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, raggedly. He is not, not really. At least, not for his thoughts. Because, despite his irrationality, he tells himself that he is right, that his mother has no idea what he is going through, and that gives him a right to be angry at her.
Isobel presses her face into her shoulder and envelops him in a warm, motherly hug. "I know. It's hard."
It takes every bit of Matthew's willpower to keep his thoughts from spiraling onto the same track, and that is frankly exhausting.
Mary hears Matthew's impassioned yelling as she waits downstairs for the doctor to come. Part of her wants to go to him, but she reminds herself that Isobel knows better how to deal with this, and she needs to be here when the doctor arrives.
Dr. Warren arrives unceremoniously, in a car that couldn't possibly be that old but just looks old, worn down from overuse and irresponsible driving. He is small, shorter than Mary, stocky, and grey bearded with a mass of curly black hair on top of his head. He seems harried, in a perpetual rush, and his words come out fast and thick.
"Good afternoon. Where might I find Captain Crawley, Miss..."
Mary shakes his outstretched hand dully. "Lady Mary."
"Ah, Lady Mary. Dr. Clarkson mentioned you in his letters. Captain Crawley's cousin?" Dr. Warren asks, taking off his own coat and putting on the rack in the hall without the help that Molesley offers. It reminds Mary of Matthew when he first came to Downton, and it makes her smile a little.
"Yes," Mary replies. "Captain Crawley is upstairs, if you'll come with me."
Dr. Warren picks up his bag and follows Mary up the stairs into Matthew's room. Mary stops him just before they reach the door. "I'm not sure if Dr. Clarkson appraised you of his full condition aside from the physical. He's suffering, quite badly, from shellshock."
"Clarkson did say something about that. I'm afraid I'm not well equipped to treat that," Dr. Warren says, uncomfortably.
"It seems very few doctors are," Mary replies. "I was hoping we could find a specialist but there seems to be none to be found."
Dr. Warren shakes his head. "It's a new field. Men coming back from the wars before this one, they didn't come back quite like this. They had nightmares sometimes but they never let their memories inhibit them. Obviously they were made of sterner stuff than this men."
"Or perhaps this war was just so much worse," Mary murmurs. "Please, be gentle with him. If he yells at you, or reacts badly, that's not really who he is. He's struggling, and he knows he's struggling, and it's not his fault."
Unimpressed but acquiescent, Dr. Warren nods and knocks on the door. "Come in," Isobel calls out, so he pushes the door open and steps inside.
Mary can immediately see that Matthew has been crying, and too her surprise, Isobel looks pale and afraid. She wonders how bad his last episode was, if it shocked Isobel so deeply.
"Captain Crawley," Dr. Warren says, making his way over to the bed. "It's good to meet you."
Matthew shakes Dr. Warren's outstretched hand dully. "Thank you for coming."
"Of course, Dr. Clarkson explained to me your rather... unusual situation but I was happy to take you on as a patient," the doctor says offhandedly. "He mailed me your file, so I've looked over it. You had a bullet wound to the leg that also fractured your femur in several places?"
Matthew nods grimly.
"I expect it's quite painful?"
"Yes," Matthew replies, his voice quiet.
Dr. Warren sits down on the chair next to Matthew's bed and scribbles something down in the file. "Clarkson sent me an x-ray of it a few weeks ago, but I'd like you to come in to my hospital next week for another one so we can see how it's healing. Otherwise, I won't know much."
"Alright."
"How are you managing mobility wise?"
Matthew presses his lips together. "Managing is perhaps the best word to describe it. I can get around, I was able to get up the stairs today, although it took a while. But I'm more steady than I was."
Dr. Warren nods. "Good, it'll get better, but don't push yourself too hard. I'm sure you're tired of hearing this, but you really do need to rest. I don't expect you ever got much sleep at the front."
Matthew's eyes turn dark and Mary immediately reaches for his hand. "No," he replies sullenly.
"Well now you're making up for lost time. This is a very quiet place, take advantage of it, and let your body heal," Dr. Warren says. "And how has... your mind been? I am by no means a psychologist, but Dr. Clarkson informed me of what was going on."
There's nothing Matthew wants to talk about less with this doctor, and he doesn't want to have another outburst and scare his mother and Mary. So he keeps his face sullen and drawn and shakes his head. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Talking helps," the doctor says. "Now, what is it that caused this? Was it something specific or..."
"I don't know, I don't want to talk about it," Matthew says, a little more forcefully this time. Not with you is implied. He is wary around this doctor; he can't trust Warren yet.
And Dr. Warren certainly doesn't help matters. "If you open up, if you tell me, I can help. It will help you."
"You have no idea what will help me," Matthew begins, his voice dangerously low. His head is pounding, a mounting pain behind his eyes, and he knows he is headed for a breakdown. But his voice remains remarkably steady. "You and all the other doctors who say they can help. You all think I'm a wimp, that my poor delicate constitution couldn't take it out there. But I survived four years of that hell, and let me tell you, it was hell. You can't know what it felt like out there, with the mud and the stench and all the dead and you just kept killing people, men like you who had families and wives and children at home but just had the misfortune of being on the other side, and then once you killed them, they gave you a medal for it. The more men you killed, the higher you got promoted, the more respected you were. What kind of a screwed up system is that? And then you would hear the cries of your own dead, you would watch as boys, they could hardly be called men they were so young, died in your arms from gas or a bullet or a shell and there it was, another life taken by this brutal war. I survived it, four years of that, and now I can't... I can't process it all in a healthy way. But I seriously doubt that anything you can say to me right now can do anything to help me get over that in a matter of minutes. It's not easy to rest from a four year journey through hell, Dr. Warren."
Matthew looks absolutely exhausted, but he has managed to avoid any yelling or even raising his voice. His tone is even, measured, calm, as he describes the horrors.
Dr. Warren isn't sure what to say. Finally, he picks up his chart. "Well, Captain Crawley, I'll be calling here in a few days to arrange your next appointment. It was good to meet you." He leaves without another word.
Only once Dr. Warren is gone does Matthew let go of Mary's hand.
He stares at the door, his jaw clenched, unable to say anything.
"Matthew," Mary says softly, rubbing his shoulder. "It's alright, you're fine. You're here, with me and your mother."
He nods, blinking back tears. "And they wonder why this whole generation is so messed up when they come back."
"It's horrible," Mary replies.
"That's an understatement." He swallows thickly, lifting his eyes to meet Mary's. "He doesn't understand. None of them do. They all think they can help, but they can't. I'm not sure you can help."
Mary glances to Isobel in desperation. Isobel, despite hearing these words earlier, is still unsure of what to do with them. Finally Mary says, "I can't promise you that we can do anything significant to help. But I promise we'll try our best."
Matthew stares straight ahead and finally acknowledges what Mary says with a short nod.
Well, they're finally settled in Scotland, but not everything is rosy quite yet. And it won't be for a while... Anyway, thank you so much for reading and please drop a review, they mean so much to me!