A/N: Because after "The Last Kingdom", Netflix recommended "Downton Abbey" and I thought, "Why not?" I did not think that the narrative gods would invade my brain again, but they did, and here is my take...

88888888

Summer 1909

"I must thank you, Lord Grantham, for the recommendation for my son." Mr. Ashby stood still as the bright summer sun warmed their heads. "He has spent a year working with the brightest minds in the country."

"You are most welcome," his lordship replied, as he made his way along the lawn to the parade of trees that ran away from Downton Abbey. "It is to my benefit now electric lights are in my house, no more candles, no more gas lights. Clean. Convenient. What do you work on next?"

"Well, your lordship," Ernest Ashby began, catching the eye of the man he loved. "Electricity is only the beginning. There will be improvements over the years, and devices that use electricity...my professor, Rutherford, believes..."

"...Rutherford, the Nobel Prize winner...?"

"...indeed so..."

Milo was aware there was conversation around her. There was always conversation around her. But here was so peaceful, so open. No Mrs. Doyle to pull at her hair or push her into clothes. No-one telling her that the dolly was hers when immediately she had to give it up and let the woman's daughter play with it.

If Winnie was supposed to have it, then she should have it - why should her father tell her it was hers when it was not so? It made no sense.

The water made sense. Light came to its surface and reflected from it, causing the droplets being pushed around by the waterfall from above to move them around as if they were stars fallen from the sky. Which, she supposed, they were. The sun was a star, so Ernest had told her, so these starlets were hers, right in front of her.

"...and there is electromagnetic induction, which should make motor engines smaller, and more efficient...less fuel, more output. A general increase in productivity...in profit..."

"Barrow," Lord Grantham called, as they got to the end of the tree avenue, "Please let Mrs. Hughes know that Mr. Ashby and his son and daughter will be staying for tea. Please, explore the gardens. I need to speak to my gamekeeper. William will escort you back inside."

- if only she could reach them. But light could not be touched. Milo watched the sunlight in the water more. Perhaps, if she only -

"You should be pleased, Ernest," Harold Ashby told his son, as they circled the central flowerbed, the plants arranged in ranks, concentric circles of shrubs and greenery, as if they were soldiers on parade, waiting for military inspection. "You have a commission, you have support of a sponsor. You will be going back to Manchester to finish your degree with your professor... Professor - "

" - Rutherford," Ernest confirmed. "And Chadwick." And Christopher. He would be there too. Ernest could not deny that some of the pull over the Pennines was towards another man that he loved, and who loved him, too. "We shall discuss it when I have graduated, father. I will be twenty one then and can access the money from mother's estate to set up a business."

- it looked so pretty...Ern and her father were so far away, and so was all the talking...she looked back to the water, and the reflections filled her world.

No-one noticed Milo Ashby, Ernest's five year old sister climb up to the railing of the fountain and lean over, to better look at the sparkles.

No-one except the Bear. The Bear saw everything, and Milo knew that the Bear would roar and shout, and make her cry. Her heart began to race, as he lolloped over, growling. She had to escape.

The splash made Harold Ashby grab his son's arm, and they looked in the direction of the fountain as the scream erupted.

"Melusina!" He gasped, as Ernest began to run over to where his sister had toppled into the water.

...it was cold...the stars had gone now...the Bear was leaning over her...

"Ern!" She managed, in between mouthfuls of water "Ern!"

He fished her out, and a maid ran for a blanket. The Bear backed away, a storm in human form ready to rain down chastisements upon Milo's head. She buried her face into Ern's arm and he put it around her, lovingly.

"Come on," said the voice that would change Milo's world for the rest of her life. "Mrs. Hughes says she can dry out before the fire." Milo was unaware then of how her brother and Thomas Barrow felt about one another, let alone understood. She would never understand. He was Ern's friend, his ally. He made Ern smile, which made Milo trust him.

Milo was aware of giggles coming from the solar as the three ladies of the house laughed at the little drowned mouse being cuddled by her brother as their father apologised for his daughter's behaviour.

"They do that, so I understand," Lord Grantham replied, nullifying the guilt of a widower doing his best with a near adult son and a tiny, unexpected daughter.

"She can come to the nursery afterwards, Papa," came a voice beside Ernest. "Mrs. Hughes had something of ours she can change into." Lady Sybil gestured the way, and smiled when Milo's brother smiled. Milo relaxed. If Ern liked the lady then she liked the lady. She peeped out at her from her brother's arm and was rewarded with a beautiful smile.

"A marvellous idea," came the voice of Lord Grantham, as Ernest Ashby scooped up his little sister and carried her into Downton Abbey.

88888888

Summer 1911

Why were they here? They had come last summer, and then had moved to Manchester.

Man-ches-ter.

It was different to Yorkshire. It has more buildings. Milo liked the buildings, that stood like mountains. She wanted to climb them, but knew that it was wrong. It was wrong because it brought a frown to her brother's eyebrows, of disapproval, of something she must not do.

It had brought a sharp sting from her father's hand when she had made towards the gates of a factory, and she had put two hands on railings that separated her from the mountain, and had lifted a leather-clad shoe to one of the iron curls. Milo would have tried to climb it, too, but Ern had frowned and her father hand slapped her.

He did not slap often, but when he did, Milo knew she had done wrong, and would feel sadness for many, many days afterwards. Ern would take it away by cuddles, by letting her sit by him while he worked. They lived together in a very small house, with her dolly next to her as Ern worked. It never occurred to Milo to interrupt him. She would sit, silently, watching the curl of his hand around the stem of a pen, making ink do his bidding, until he had filled up a page and then another, with words, with numbers.

"Silver," Ern had told her once. "Radium. Gold." And Milo would repeat them, and take out paper of her own and a precious pencil that she had once been given by Thomas Barrow from the pantry at Downton Abbey, and copied down the words, saying them, almost like a prayer. Then she would read the books her father had brought for her, and copy down these too. Sometimes, he would praise her writing, often, he would look at the words and put them aside.

At least Mrs. Doyle had not had to come, though she resented having to be forced out of the house to play with other children in the "tenfoot", the strip of open space where women hung their washing and dogs made a mess and factory smoke coiled into the sky to become one with it.

They were like her, Milo knew. Boys, girls. Playing cricket, kicking around a ball. Swinging a rope. Irene Carter had a rope, and Ivy Swinson. They were a little older than Milo, and would try to get her to jump to their rhymes, to the rhythm of their singing: "My mother said I never should...play with the Gypsies in the wood..."..."Not last night but the night before..."..."Sing a song of London town..." But every time her foot would slip, or she would be too fast or two slow.

Ivy always laughed when Milo fell, but Irene was kinder and gave her a shorter rope and showed her how she could do it on her own. It wasn't much better, though Milo could manage it. She preferred, however, to sit on the wall with her paper and pencil and write and draw while she watched the other children at their games, ones she had learned through small experience that she could not grasp intuitively, and made no sense to her.

And then all of a sudden, they were packed up, and it was summer time and they were walking towards the station to catch the train to York, and then the branch line to Downton, and back to neat clothes and tidy hair and Winnie Doyle and Ern's sad face as he turned it to the man standing at the station, watching them leave.

Harold Ashby had instructed Milo and made her repeat back to him and to Ernest what it was that was required of her when they were in Lord Grantham's company. She should hold onto their trouser legs, tightly, and not let go until either told her to.

"You are returning to Cambridge?" Lord Grantham asked.

"With Professor Rutherford," Ernest told him. Milo tried to peep out, but Ernest held her between his leg and their father's.

So Milo was there when Lord Grantham praised Ernest Ashby on his degree and wished him every success in his business, before telling him he wanted electric light in all the rooms in the house, even downstairs. "We want to be every bit as good as Skelton House," Lord Grantham told Harold Ashby.

"My son will make it better," Milo's father assured him, and Lord Grantham gestured her father into the library and she watched him go, in the same sad way that she always felt when she parted from either her father or from Ern.

Downstairs was where they were going, though, which made Milo pleased, because first she was in Ern's company, and second, she knew that Thomas Barrow was likely to be around.

He was a tall man, with a fixed, surly expression which made him always look cross, but Milo liked him because his expression did not change much, and she relied more on what he was doing rather than what his face was saying he was doing. Faces confused Milo, and people confused her. But she knew enough that the face most important to her lit up brighter than the lights he was installing in Downton Abbey every time he saw Thomas Barrow, which made Milo like the man too.

"You were very well behaved today," their father told her, as they were shown out of the drawing room.

"Will there be bread, and butter?" Milo had not seen the terrible Bear that day, and it made her easier, and she found the words, and put them together and her father smiled, so they must have been in the right order and, more importantly, relevant to him.

"We can but ask," Ern told her, and ruffled her hair.

"You can ask," her brother told Milo. "You are seven now, Melusina. You must be braver."

But it was not bravery. Milo never felt afraid to ask anything of anybody. But it was more that she wondered whether, from the torrent of words in her head, constantly checking herself, constantly checking and calibrating her surroundings, she had chosen the correct ones that would do the thing she was asking.

But she was sure she knew what to say. It was not much different to what she had said to Ern, a variation. So when they got to the bottom of the stairs, Milo did ask. She ran over to Daisy, who was not so big as the other people down there, and in her best voice, asked, "I am seven and my brother said I could ask for some bread and butter."

"And a drink of waartuh?" Daisy asked, smiling down to Milo, but she shook her head. It was bread and butter she was allowed; there had been no mention of "waartuh", as Daisy said the word in her Yorkshire accent, or anything else.

"Bread and butter. And because I am seven."

"She can sit here, as long as she doesn't touch anything," Mrs. Patmore told Ern, as he turned his head towards Thomas.

"She won't, Mrs. Patmore," Ernest assured her, and said to Milo, "You won't."

"I won't," Milo repeated. And she didn't. She just stared at the woman, and watched the procedure of the cook, with Daisy's help, prepare the food for dinner. She watched the process - clean bakeware, food, make sure the oven was on, prepare things that needed cooking, put them in at various times so they would all come out together. Some needed longer than others so they went in first.

She could see inside the range oven that some went at different heights. The blast of heat from the oven touched Milo's face, and she wondered why the chicken went in the middle and the potatoes at the top. Was it size? Was it type? A chicken was an animal - perhaps being in the middle was like why the vicar at their church was in the middle - he was most important and perhaps the chicken was most important...no...it couldn't be that...

As Milo's mind ran through several hypotheses as she it into her bread and butter "piece" and chewed on it, part of it was aware that Ern had moved to one of the corners of the kitchen and he stood with Thomas between the kitchen and the servants' hall close to one another. Another was aware of a black cloud coming in her direction. Milo turned her back to the cloud - if she were to ignore it, it may float away again. Thomas took Ern's hand, just for a moment. The man at the station had done that, sometimes, when he had visited the Ashby's house in Manchester. They were friends; friends, grown up men friends, clearly did that.

"I am spending a lot of time at the Post Office. When father next speaks to Guglielmo, I will put it to him."

"Will yer?" Thomas asked.

"I will. I know of a way - I think I know of a way, to boost the signal. Bigger distance, less power. Cheaper. More attractive to investors." Milo had heard Ern say those words before. They had spent a lot of time at the Post Office. She liked it there, the order of the letters, sorted according to the alphabet: Mrs. Tibbs had been patient with her and praised Milo when she had, very quickly, arranged the incoming post into the correct piles while Ern spoke to her husband about the telegraph.

"...I know something that is attractive..." Ern was smiling now. Good. Milo smiled.

"...with Chadwick, with Karl Braun...and Geiger..."

"...oh aye? Should I be jealous?"

But the cloud did not disappear no matter how long Milo ignored it. Worse, it was getting closer. And, she looked down to where her plate was, with her half-consumed "piece": beside it was the "waartuh" Daisy had offered to and which Milo knew was not part of the agreement

And the black cloud reformed itself into its true shape, the Bear, and the Bear growled.

In fright, Milo slipped from her chair and under the kitchen table, finding a path under it towards the stairs. In her wake, the illegitimate glass of "waartuh" tumbler from it and smashed onto the limestone blocked kitchen floor.

She had her "piece" and she had a quiet place to eat it, Milo knew, when she found a tiny space under the stairs into which she could secrete herself, and she munched, thoughtfully on the bread while all around her disruption bled away from her ears and into the backdrop of the scenery. She had her "piece" and she bit into it, as the Bear roared far, far away.

And the oven came to her mind, and the position of the food being cooked for dinner. She didn't think importance of the food, or any sort of symbolism depended on how fast different foods cooked.

The chicken was bigger; there was more of it to heat than the potatoes, which were spread out in a dish. But why put them in at the same time if they needed less heat? Were there different heats inside the oven?

They had been to a blacksmiths, in Manchester. Ern had wanted to talk to the man about something. Milo had watched the metals in the heat, sometimes coming out red, sometimes yellow, sometimes white.

"It's the heat," the blacksmith had told her, when she had found some words to ask. "Sometimes I want to bend the metal a lot, and I want it soft. It needs to be hot, like this." White hot. "And sometimes cooler, so it can keep a shape." Orange. Maybe the food needed to be like that.

Her piece gone, and her stomach warm, Milo sat back and listened to the sounds of the house, which sounded to her chaotic.

"Milo! Milo! Where are you?" The calling came at sporadic moments, came to her ears and faded away. She could still hear the Bear roaring.

The Bear was roaring, though Milo knew she should come out. She had caused this, somehow. She was always causing things like this. She should come out and find out what she had done, to learn what not to do next time. But the Bear was roaring.

"Father? Father! We have lost Milo!" Ernest almost jumped on Harold Ashby as their father plodded down the stairs. Harold, relaxed, content, proud and pleased with their audience with Lord Grantham, sprang to attention at his son's words. They were used to Milo getting herself into trouble, but there was an urgency in his son's words.

"She was just here - "

"I can see you." Over the chaos a voice cut through, and Milo looked out through back into the hallway. The light had gone. Someone was standing there. "Milo, isn't it?"

Even though she had said nothing the person belonging to the voice did not move. Eventually, Milo found her words.

"Has the Bear gone?"

"The Bear...?" Milo inched out, and felt her stomach lighten. It was Ern's friend. She smiled. Then the Bear came past, flitting into her view and Milo hurried back under the stairs.

"Mr. Carson is the Bear?" Thomas leaned into the stair cavity and lowered his voice. "I can make him go away."

Milo waited as Thomas disappeared from view. She heard, though did not understand, the man's words: "Mr. Carson, his lordship wishes to see you about the new electricity in the house."

"Now?"

"Yes, he wants to speak to you about any disruption that may occur and how it can be avoided."

A long time passed, then a hand came towards her. Milo stayed where she was.

"Will you take my hand? I can take you back to your brother." And Milo did, letting Thomas Barrow hold her in his arms as he called down the passage.

"Ernest! I have something for you!"

Milo did not see the look on his face as she fell towards her brother, but she felt something between them, and remembered the feeling, long after her extended telling off.

88888888

April 1912

"So, you're eight?"

Nod. Another nod. But Mrs. Tibbs did not move away. Milo wished she would, she was getting in the light. Another letter to Downton village. Another one for York, and another. They go together. One for far away. Whitby. That was by the sea. They had been there once. It was when she had first seen sand and the sea. When she had felt the texture of seaweed and Ern had just about prevented her from putting a crab's leg into her mouth.

"Eight."

Would that do it? Would Mrs. Tibbs move? She was helping her, wasn't she? "Milo, you are always so helpful." That was what the woman would say to her. It was better than being at home, with Mrs. Doyle and her daughter. Milo had pretty much given Winnie the dolly anyway - what use was it? It looked like a little baby, but didn't move. Milo did not see the point.

She glanced towards the window. Ern's ankles and feet were still in view. He was fitting a wireless telegraphy receiver from the roof of the Post Office. It had to be done in the very early morning, Mr. Tibbs had explained, so it would be done before people were about.

Milo had been awake, and had been agitated. "I'll take her," Ernest had told her father, as she clung to his leg. "Mrs. Tibbs will let her sort out the letters again, she is excellent at it. It calms her down."

Milo was aware her father and her brother were discussing her, and aware, too, that she was in some sort of trouble. But, Mrs Doyle had woken her up that morning and she couldn't go to sleep, and her favourite dress was not clean, and she couldn't find one of her shoes...

"You have done a really good job with those - " Mrs Tibbs cossetted, but broke off as the hammer of the telegraph machine started to drum.

" - your brother has done so well. He is waiting for his degree conferment; he is going to be going to Cambridge - " Mrs. Tibbs broke off and sat down at the telegraph table, looking at the print out as it spooled out of the machine before taking up a pen and dipping it in a little pot of India ink.

Milo moved from the Post Office table and inched towards the telegraph, and the hammer, moving up and down, up and down, it made a pretty sight; it was rhythmical. The noise seemed to make her feel happier.

"Mr. Tibbs?" Mrs. Tibbs got up from her table and crossed to the door, her skirt brushing the wooden planked floor, freshly scrubbed that morning. Ernest came down the ladder and was through the door first, as the Postmaster strode past him and towards the stable yard.

"You did all of these?" Ernest asked of Mrs. Tibbs, giving Milo a beaming smile. Milo nodded.

"And she has never been to school?" Mrs. Tibbs asked, peering past Ernest, then calling, "Mr. Tibbs!"

"Father and I taught her; mother insisted, so we respected her wishes," Ernest continued, looking at the piles of letters neatly arranged into correct districts, then alphabetically.

"Milo!" Ern chided, coming over to the telegraph table. Milo slipped down from the chair, and stood still in front of her brother, waiting for the scolding. "You can't do that!"

But she had. Milo had finished the transcription from the telegraph tape.

"Come here!" Mrs. Tibbs beckoned to her husband, pushing past Ernest. Who had paused in his telling off when he read what his sister had written down.

The day unfolded, and the seriousness of the situation at Downton Abbey transpired. Her brother finished fitting the radio transmitter and he took Milo up to the house to discuss the tragedy at length with Thomas Barrow.

The "Unsinkable" had sunk.