October 1920

Four months is the longest he's been without any episodes or nightmares. He doesn't have to hide. They went out to dinner for the first time, in public. There were some stares but it wasn't uncomfortably so.

He did not believe himself to be the romantic type. He thought himself more quite romantic about ideas, philosophy, law, art, music and a lot of other such things of his interest. She thought him too hard on himself. He was always like that. He was not just romantic in looks. He was so much more to her.

After his second proposal in 1916, they had dinner on the balcony of his hotel room, he had told her, "You and I are the only ones who make sense. I've never been able to talk to anyone the way I talk to you. Isn't that the way it's suppose to be?"

She had nodded, "I should hope so."

His eyes had flickered up to her, just as they did now. Her eyes spoke to him as much as her lips.

Mary found it strange that he was staring at her lips. Then again Matthew Crawley was ever hardly normal. That's what she loved about him. He was like no one else. Anyone in his position would have given up. She was so proud of him. It was hard to imagine that a little over half a year ago, it had still been uncertain how much he would be able to walk, where he was now, how far he had come. The first time he'd been able to stand, it had been early December of 1918. She had caught him in the Great Hall, listening to a record. Miraculously he had stood up from his chair, albeit shaky legs. As he had grabbed onto her, they gradually steadied, clinging to her as they had danced. Seemingly a miracle. Doctor Clarkson had said that it was nothing short of one. That he had been partially wrong in his diagnoses.

Matthew had had secretly been practicing to stand, with Bates's aide, it had all started with the urge he had felt to stand. He had wanted it to be a surprise to Mary. And he had wanted to avoid telling Clarkson about it his initial thought, that it'd been connected to the tingling, in fear of a repeat of before, that Clarkson would say it was all in his head. When he had told Mary after Clarkson's visit the next morning, she had suggested that they go to a specialist. He had his doubts that things wouldn't change, even after when they had gone to a different doctor, Mary having finally convinced him, (she had already arranged an appointment) to a Doctor Jacobson, a specialist in Leeds.

Even then the effort just to stand had been difficult. His upper half had to still compensate though not as much now. It had taken so long to get here. There was still a lot of uncertainties. There had been far too many in his life. But there were many things to be grateful for. He had come this far! Not a lot of paralytics, even partial ones survived very long. He would make the most of it with Mary. He was far from the man that he was the first weeks of his injury, when he had been deeply depressed. He was out of that long dark tunnel.

He still needed the chair whenever he went out or for long distances. He still had to use two sticks but he didn't bring them with him. He'd look less of a fool not having to juggle them around. This was their new normal. And he oddly felt...comfortable with it.

Things were looking bright. But still he felt less of a man in some way. So far he had not been able to give her a child. They could adopt. But then he had thought that due to his condition they might not be allowed to adopt. Who in their right mind would? He mentally shakes it away. He knows he should be grateful for what he does have. He could have died. He could walk, had some of his Independence back. It had seemed like a small rock in a large pond, (he had often skimped as a child. His father had taught him on one of their rare fishing trips) before facing his biggest concern.

Then there was still the question of his sexual life, what that would look like. Jacobson had said that it was possible but rare for someone like him to have children. He had had more questions about it, the pacific details on how it could be accomplished, details he couldn't discuss with Mary and had been too embarrassed to ask in front of her. And then if the doctor had read his mind right then and there, the doctor had asked Mary to step out of the room.

"It might take some experimenting and hard work. There's a good possibility that you can regain sensation sexually, given you already have some of it back in your legs. Although it's still a little to early to tell. First you have to focus on rebuilding your strength in your legs and upper body before we can get you walking." There had been no guarantee what that would look like either, not then. The doctor's prediction on how long it would take had been right. A year or two.

Still that foreboding question hung in the forefront of his mind, though Jacobson had wanted him not to worry about 'the rest' "When you're married and your wife is patient for a while, things can go very well. I don't think there should be a problem otherwise, with you preforming your manly duties. It'll just take time. What happened to you is a shame but I'm certain that you can live a good life, if you're willing to make the psychological adjustments to the limitations you might still have."

"Still limited mobility..."

"Yes. But I'm optimistic for the best for you."

"What are you thinking about?" Mary asked him, bringing him out of his thoughts.

"Nothing of importance." He finished off his glass, starting at it for a moment.

"Are you sure we're not doing this too early?" She was asking if he was truly ready to be out in a more public place. He had been out to the office on several occasions recently and the workshop that Edith and Isobel had set up for the soldiers. Though he had gone only once. It was his first time in a crowd of people, other than the anniversary of the armistice last year, when he and many others had received their own deserved metals presented by the King. That had been different, he'd been around men like him, men that had lost so much.

"It's not my first time being out like this. And I could care less what they think. I'd rather be here with you than in bed all day." He reached his arm across the table, grabbing hers. At first he had felt like everyone was staring at him. He was humiliated. Also he felt frustrated. Going out anywhere was a huge ordeal. Now, she was here with him. That's all that mattered. For the first time in a long time, it feels like freedom. It's freeing. So freeing. I'm more social when I'm in my chair because I'm having to think of less things, he discovers when he and Mary start talking so freely than they had done before, before he had felt so shut off from the world.

She answered and smiled, the amber fleck present when the smile touched her eyes. Replying enthusiastically. Her Matthew was coming back but only in fragments.

Not long now before he comes back completely. For far too long he's been a shell of his former self.

His time being fully paralyzed, and having faced certain death every day for three years, it had made him nicer, a little less prickly but still prickly around the edges. She adores this new vulnerability. He opened up to her about things about his childhood that he had never told her about. She knew that his own mother used to be emotionally void and unavailable as hers but he had always avoided giving the reason why, until now. His mother's own mother had died when she was very young, leaving her father to raise his two children on his own and had been rather distant with her.

"It was obvious her brother was the favored child. Despite all their differences she was only ever close to her brother." Uncle Teddy. He had died in the Boars in 1902, saving his patience, during heavy battle. His brother that had died, ten years before Matthew was born, had been named after his Uncle. There had been more children before him, miscarriages, a stillbirth, and a sick child. He had been the strongest of them all to survive, hardly sick a day in his life. Now look at him. His mother had to deal with yet another sick child, (an adult child but still her child) well hardly, since Mary had taken charge of things, and since they had married. They had hired their own private nurse. Mother still got that chance to baby him whenever she came to visit or when he was visiting at Crawley House. He got the feeling she was trying to make up for something. "Although I think she did love me...does. She probably just didn't know how, until now."

"You two always gave the illusion that you were close."

"We were starting to. When your father so kindly uprooted us from our quaint city of Manchester, wanting to change our lives."

"Oh, is it his fault then?" She said, teasingly.

"It had just been mother and I for so long. After father died." They had gotten used to it. Just the two of them. A family of their own. "You're lucky to have him in your life the way you do. My father was always busy with his surgery but made time to spend with me." There was always a sadness and longing behind his voice when he spoke of his father, Mary always noticed. It stems from not being there when he died.

"Don't be fooled. Papa is almost always tied up with the peerage or the tenants in the village. Appearances aren't everything, darling."

Don't I know it. "They both still found a way." He continued. His father had always done what father's do with their sons. Riding a bike, playing cricket. Two of the things he had loved because of his father.

Things I can no longer do.

Focus on what you can do. Sybil's words echoed in his mind.

He could hardly imagine throwing a cricket ball to his son from the vantage point of a wheelchair. Bonding came in the form of action. A bond between father and son he had with his father, he might not ever have with his own. The image of the boy in his minds eye might as well be a ghost. Ghosts of those who never were sometimes haunted him as much as the ones who had been. Though much less of it now. His father's ghost however, he had never been able to make peace with. He hadn't been there for his father. His father, whom had always been the one there for him. He had been there for his mother after he passed and vise versa but it wasn't the same.. She did nurse him on the rare occasion he had been sick, he had been sent home from boarding school, was always by his side when he'd have nightmares as a boy. But it was his father that had visited him at school. Which was ironic considering he was away at university when his father had been sick, not once coming to see him. His mother had clung to him after that, though he couldn't help but sense that she had been hiding something, that she had blamed him. He loved his mother, who she was now. How could he not forgive her? Life was too short.

"She loved my father dearly but they often disagreed. Maybe...I suppose she was afraid of being loved. Why I was, other than my predicament." She watched him shake his head as if to shake away a thought. "Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?"

He was trying to shake away the thought of his failed attempts with her, shake away the question if he'd be able to regain full control over it, if he'd truly ever be a man again. He had been able to pleasure her at first on their honeymoon, but a few failed attempt afterwards, it had humiliated him. He had tried not to show it in front of Mary, however patience she was, bless her. It was still early. Jacobson had said. Whatever that had meant. It's going to take some time to get 'him' to wake up. Be inventive. But Matthew was uncomfortable with being inventive, even when Mary was doing things to him and he couldn't feel it. It wouldn't be successful every time. Jacobson had also said. But every time they had tried being successful was far from in-between. He would put sex off of the table, at least for now, and just enjoy the evening.

There are other ways to love.

But he wanted so very much to give her children. There was another way. He wouldn't give up trying, for her. For now it was too much. I'm still half a man. In that sense. (can't even keep your own pecker up for long, just enough to please a woman but not long enough to give her your seed. Even they want to run away from ya. Who would want you as a father?) Who's voice is that? It didn't sound like his. He bit down on the hard bread to silence the dreaded voice at the back of his head, and chased it down with a glass of water, drowning it. I've accepted my fate. I've accepted. Why does it still feel like I'm drowning?

It felt like an eternity for Mary to respond. "No. It doesn't. I completely understand." She would. She had pushed him away when he had first purposed. " I don't think my parents went through most of their lives loving each other, not right away at least." She hung her head a moment not comfortable of speaking of love. She could not say such things but show her love and devotion to Matthew. She wanted to show him in other ways too. He had been so embarrassed and devastated the last time they had tried to make love. She'd wait till he was ready. There was a lot of waiting in their relationship. There sometimes seemed to be a rift. Sometimes she wondered if it had to do with her dalliance with the Turkish Prince. And if that was sometime the reason behind why Matthew was uncomfortable when they lied together, if he was up to snuff. No man wants to be compared with another man. Then she would tell herself, of course not, you're being ridiculous. That would be the farthest thing from Matthew's mind. He knows it meant nothing. That part of him is taking longer to heal than the rest of him had. What they had didn't have to solely rely on that part of things. She wanted to tell him. She had tried and he wouldn't listen.

Oh, I wish he's just listen.

How she wanted to box his ears. But she would wait, when he was ready. Their relationship was more than that. They were so much more. Her and Matthew's relationship was deeper than anything she'd ever known, even the love between her parents. But even they had kept each other at arms length. She didn't want that to become that way for her and Matthew.

"They just did what they thought they had to." They hadn't married for love in the beginning but she and Matthew had. The silence between them at times, she feared they were heading in her parent's direction. Her father had been seeing Lady Sinderby, Rachel Aldridge, her husband had died of the flu too,(she had a son a bit younger than Sybil, who had survived the epidemic) He swears she is just an acquaintance when had been confronted by it at the New Years eve party by Her, Granny, and Aunt Rosamund. It had come to light that Lady Sinderby's family was Jewish, to which her father had replied,

"Cora's grandfather was Jewish." He had come over from Poland.

The relationship between her father and Lady Sinderby was to remain a secret. The more Mary had seen them together, when they thought no one was looking, it seemed he was showing that woman more affection than he had with her own mother. It's been almost a year since she died. Why shouldn't papa be happy? But that wasn't what this is about. She was going to let her mind get distracted. "I want more than that."

"I know you do..." He grabbed her hands from across the table, but then looked down. "I just haven't figured things out yet, to be a husband, in a sense a husband should." She knew he was referring to that side of things. It infuriated her that he didn't see that wasn't what she meant. Why can't he see that it doesn't matter?

He withdrew his hands and went back to his food. When he looked up for a second he saw that her inquiring expression had turned into a frustrated one. He told himself not to further engage. Instead he leaned back without a word. He didn't want to make a scene in front of everyone. She couldn't well storm out and leave him here. He was not about to let the night become spoiled. "How about we go to Annabelle's." It was the dance school in the village, where all the young debutantes had learned to dance. It also held socials for older couples.

"That does sounds like fun. I haven't been there in ages. Mama took me there to learn how to dance, when I was eighteen, after I was engaged to Patrick."

"Dear old Patty."

"I've never heard anyone call him that other than his mother and even then he'd give her hell for it."

"Yes." He smiled, taking a sip of coffee now. He recalled Patrick relaying the story to him, one night in the trenches, in a far off world. It had been an oddly silent one. The silence could be as deadly as the sound of shell blasts. Not knowing what was coming was the worst trap you could fall under. He tried to picture a young Patrick and Mary, along with her sisters, running up and down the stairs and Great Hall of Downton, to outrun Patrick's mother. "He let me call him that and the officers. I suppose it was an army thing." His head turned as if someone was pulling a string. He was starting to get that far away look in his eyes.

She had to pull the string back before he could go away. "Are you sure you're up for it?"

He turned his head back to her, it seemed he was coming out of a daze. "You worry too much about me."

"Where would we be if I didn't?" Mary said with shrug, a warm smile spreading on her face. "Patrick hated dancing."

"Then that settles it! As soon as we finish here."

They didn't end up dancing too long. Only half a song before he got too tired. He told her she could continue dancing if he wanted. "I don't think I can dance anymore." He had said. "Besides you're young and I'm old." He joked.

Mary did a double take at the other patrons on the dance floor. "The men here are as old as my father and they're dancing with girl's Sybil's age."

"Some people are younger than they look." He seemed out of breath as he sat down in his wheelchair, a few meters away. He had to use Mary for guidance since he didn't have his sticks. She was dreadfully worried, almost frightful, that he was having trouble with his breathing.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Mary, if you ask are you sure, one more time..." He said with a laugh between each breath. "Go on..." he gestured with a hand toward the dance floor. "have fun." His breathing gradually turned back to normal, only then did she oblige. She was dancing with an old gentleman about eighty, who had more difficulty than him, it seemed, when a group of service men walked in. One of them asked Mary to dance.

He shouldn't be jealous. He wanted her to have fun. Another soldier in a wheelchair rolled up to him and they started to talk. It was a relieving weight off his shoulders, though they didn't talk about the war. It was a silent oath. After the song ended, the soldier that was dancing with Mary must have asked her for another one, for she shook her head and pointed in his direction. She came over to him and went around to the back of his chair. Her smile turned into a brief frown, a bit annoyed and relieved, hiding it from behind Matthew's chair so he couldn't see. "Ready to go?" She asked him cheerfully, her smile returned.

When they arrived home, they didn't go inside right away. They stayed outside and talked some more.

"It would be easy to say that you are only limited by what you allow yourself to be limited by, however, living in a wheelchair on and off...even after the war, all those who require one," After all they did serving their country, the disabled get treated like garbage, like their sacrifices had meant nothing. "it does have social implications. In the beginning, every one sees you differently, until you show them that you are still you. I will say that often many look past you, as if not to see you."

"I see you."

"You always do. And haven't I always told you that?"

After a moment, he went on,

"I believe the most common glances are an inherent wish to not offend, hurt, or make to feel inadequate the person in the chair. Those who take their 'able-bodiedness' for granted are brought to an uncomfortable juncture when faced with someone confined to a wheelchair. They think or try to imagine how they would feel should they suddenly lose the use of those parts of their bodies that are taken for granted. So, I would have to say that it is due to a mixture of sympathy, empathy, regret, fear, and in some cases perhaps even anger that they feel in response to that type of encounter."

"Do you...did you ever think that I was one of them, that I thought that way about you?"

"No. Never." His kiss is like fire. She doesn't want this to ever end. But she did not know how easily he can rebuke those words, that he's accepted it, that he doesn't think himself worthless, when those claws of depression sink their way into him again, just a year later. She'd be there for him. As she'd always been.

"Do you remember the day father died?" He was looking out the window, watching the drops roll down it. "It was a day like this one." So many had died in the rain and mud, and the unforgiving shell holes and rat-infested trenches. He thinks of the finer luxuries to banish it from him mind. But then feels guilty. Almost as guilty as he had felt on that day.

He had been coming home from Cambridge when he had received the news. He had stared at the window, watching the droplets as the train steamed down the track. He had been finally going home to see his father and he had just then received the telegram. A young woman had walked up to him, "Telegram for you Mr. Crawley." Imagine a good looking girl approaches you and you think, she has taken interest in you, only to be delivering to you the worst possible news. The cold loneliness that he had felt revived itself, seeping into his bones. That could just be his injury but he doubted it.

Isobel looked at him solemnly. She was glad that he couldn't see her face, being too preoccupied with his thoughts. What had brought this on?

She watched as he brushed the curtains with the front and back of his hand, as if it were a cat, rubbing it's scent against the fine silk. As a boy, Matthew would always feed the stray cats that would wonder onto their porch, even when they had very little for themselves. Those strays had saved him from being attacked by a dog one day.

That day had struck fear in her, that she was going to loose another child. Then out of nowhere, one by one the cats zoomed, hissing and pouncing with their claws at the unwelcome visitor, who had it's own teeth bared at Matthew. The dog had whimpered and scampered off. Isobel had been sorry then for having ever scolded him for skimming their milk and fish Reginald had worked hard catching.

Matthew was still a little weary and untrustworthy of canines. The thing that had frightened her more than that day, was when he had announced he was going off to war. Even if she had told him about the children she had lost then, it wouldn't have changed his mind. She had to have faith that he'd come through in the end. And he had. But she had only half her son back, not because of his injuries he had sustained, but in his spirit. She felt it. Despite this she had tried to convince herself, he was still her son (he was but not in the way she had known him) that he was wrong, that her son was gone. He had been half right. She would always still love him regardless. She always had. It had taken her husband's death, and many other circumstances to see that. "Yes. I will never forget that day." He did not stir from his position. Their teas seemed to always attract the talk of death, the memories of loved ones.

"Mother, do you still blame me? For his death?"

"What makes you think I..."

"There's something you never told me. What he said. If he said anything."

"He was delirious and in pain, Matthew." He winced at her words. Her tone became soft, apologetic. "He asked for you."

"And I didn't come."

"You were a young man. You couldn't comprehend the severity..."

"Excuses I've been telling myself for years, trying to convince myself of. Was he...was he disappointed in me? I really need to know."

"No. He would never be disappointed in you."

"You would say that even if he was."

"Maybe." She teased, smiling. Then it fell. "I never blamed you Matthew. He would never think that now. He would be so proud of you. Having the strength for what you had to go through. What you're still going through." She reached out her hand. He started to slowly extend his arm across the table but stopped halfway.

"I still ask myself, what if I had died?" He wrapped his hands around the mug in front of him to warm his hands. "If I'd be better off. But I know what the answer is."

"And what is the answer?" Her heart nearly skipped a beat.

He picked up his mug and took a sip before putting it back down. "No. It wouldn't be better." He took another sip and smiled.

He looked better than he had in months, the past few years. But looks can be deceiving. Depressed people still smiled even though they're sad or distressed. It was so hard to tell with Matthew. With anyone. She could ask if she could get Doctor Clarkson to prescribe him something. They had already been down this road. She knows what his answer will be. He wanted his head clear. He had said. He didn't trust himself. It was easy to become addicted. As a son of a doctor and nurse he knew this and at first hand. If soldiers didn't take to drugs and opiates, they took to drink. Matthew had hardly touched a drop after the war, apart from occasional with a meal and a cognac with Robert after dinner. And always with those dreaded cigars. Each soldier had their vice. She'd rather it be the cigars.

"It'd be like killing him all over again."

"Who?"

"I can't give you your son back."

"Matthew, we've been over this..."

He sucked in a breath, running his hands over his thighs. He couldn't feel the motion. Why can't she understand. Why can't any of them? Taking his life would not have only left a world of pain for those left behind, and would not only destroy the memory of young William but the memory of Matthew Crawley. "I'm not him."

"I'm sure your father would devise..."

"You're not sure what he wants."

"I know what he wanted. He wanted a life for you. All the hopes and dreams we had for our other children..." Had faded and died with them. "We were so blessed with you."

He turns his head away. The key being were. Past tense. "I know." He muttered softly.

"I don't think you do."

"I need to be heading back. I have a big day tomorrow at the office. I got a major overhauling of the books that Robert wants me to look at."

"Do you know what the name Matthew mean?" He stopped in the doorway but didn't turn around. "It means Blessing, Gift from God." She watches his shoulders go slack.

He feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Breath on his neck. He wants to hightail it and run but he knows he can't. He couldn't run to save his life. Or anyone's. Even if there had been a German behind him. He had failed to save them. His men, the men he had sent to their deaths. The last few months since opening his old army suitcase and valise he hadn't really thought about it. He wasn't going to loose this battle now.

He felt her hand on his shoulder. He wanted to turn and face her, embrace her, but he felt if he did, he would crumble.

"You are a gift, Matthew. A gift to your father and I and the people that have come into your life. I doubt there isn't any one of them who's life you haven't touched. Don't ever think you are a burden. Because you are a blessing." She continued.

He wants to put his arms around her, sob into her. But what good would that do? He's not a child. He just stands, leaden. He puts his hand on top of hers and squeezes it, giving her a smile. "I couldn't have done this without any of you. I've been so bloody ungrateful."

"Not unbearably so."

"I'm glad we had this talk."

"Why don't you come and sit for a while? You've been standing for quite some time."

He went back to sit down. A short time later, Mary came to join them. She talked about King Alexander of Greece was injured by a monkey while walking through the grounds of the Tatoi Palace. They had laughed about it.

"Who expects to be attacked by a monkey?" She had asked.

"It is to expected since they ought to be common in the area. But the statistics are rare." He was going into his lawyer mode. Isobel decided to leave the room and quietly slipped away. You could easily forget how damaged he was, and at the same time you could see how their relationship was heeling him, how she was healing him. It might take years but one day she will have the rest of her son back.

"I had wanted to travel there one day but now I'm not so sure." Mary continued.

She could lighten any mood, just by her presence. At least to Matthew. They continued on talking about the days events and the months events. Leaving out the bad news of course. Lady Sinderby would be coming to dinner later in the week. A few days before her arrival, 9th of October 1920, Lloyd George held a speech at Carnarvon in Wales that his government would never allow Irish home rule, and that the British government would continue to fight to maintain order. This got Tom in a foul mood for the next several days. Matthew knew Tom's limits and that he wouldn't do anything irrational.

At the same dinner Lady Sinderby would be attending, General Strutt would also. The General being against the Irish home rule, seeing them as brutes, Tom had planned to humiliate him by pouring a pot of slop on him, unbeknownst to everyone of course. Anna, Carson, and Miss Hughes had stopped him in time, thanks to a misunderstanding.