AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I have always enjoyed the trope of a time-travelling character reliving their past life and trying to correct their mistakes. I was elated and truly enjoyed Mr. Chaos's "Authors of Our Own Fate" about time-travelling Matthew and, inspired by it, Anne O' the Island's "Miracles Happen", with time-travelling Mary. But while I truly loved them and sincerely recommend them to anybody, I wanted to write something different - a time-travelling Mary, who started her journey not as an old woman, who had a rich, fulfilling life, but while she was still in midst of mourning for Matthew. I've seen one story with similar premises, but it jumped from the time-travel aspect very quickly and I wanted to explore it and the emotions I imagined it must have entailed in more detail. Below is the result. I hope it gives someone as much enjoyment as I had writing it.

CHAPTER 1 – WAKING UP IN THE PAST

Downton Abbey, April 1912

Mary felt herself slowly waking up. Those days it was most often not a welcome feeling.

Although occasionally she suffered from horrible nightmares, with vivid images of Matthew's mangled body, usually she dreamed of happier times – dancing with him, laughing with him, making love with him, seeing him playing with George – and waking up from those dreams to face a reality most assuredly devoid of Matthew was simply excruciating and not at all easier with time. Mama was hounding her to give up her mourning clothes, to follow some ridiculous timetable for grief, but at this point Mary just couldn't stand the thought of it. It would mean to her that she was over Matthew, and she most definitely wasn't. Maybe someday, in the future, she would arrive at this point, but at the moment all she felt was a giant, raw chasm where he was torn from her.

Still, she couldn't stay in bed forever – even though there were many days in the last months that she desperately wanted to and often tried – so she reluctantly opened her eyes. And promptly frowned when she noticed the red walls.

Why was she in her old bedroom, instead of hers and Matthew's room?

She looked around and with another frown noticed her combs, toiletries and jewellery box at the vanity, but no photograph of Matthew. Even if she for some reason decided to move back here and then forget it, why wouldn't she take it with her when her other things have been brought over?

It was this moment when she realised she didn't have her engagement and wedding rings on her fingers. Why would she have taken them off?!

God, how much must she have had drunk last night to make such strange decisions and not remember an iota of it?

Raising her hand to her forehead in response to an oncoming headache, Mary rang for Anna. Whatever strange decisions she apparently made last night she had no wish to remain in her maidenly bedroom, with all signs of her marriage gone. She was going to put back her rings, place her husband's photographs on her bedside table and vanity, and pluck the courage to see her son. The poor orphan deserved to at least see his mother before he forgot how she looked like.

Anna arrived promptly and her appearance caused another confused frown on Mary's face. Why did she have a housemaid's apron and cap, when she had been her lady's maid since Mary got married?

"Good morning, milady," Anna greeted her in a subdued manner which Mary got used to during the last months. Sometimes she missed Anna's natural cheerfulness, but at the same time she was aware she probably would have bitten her maid's head off if she dared to approach her like that. She abhorred people trying to cheer her up more than anything and she was grateful to Anna for understanding it better than most of her family. Still, sometimes she missed the times when Anna's greeting was full of cheer and a morning full of promise.

Anna opened the curtains and went to Mary's dressing room to pick up clothes. Mary's eyes widened when she saw her carrying back a white and lilac dress.

"No, Anna. Bring me a black one. I am in mourning and I will be for as long as I need to," she snapped. Anna's face showed surprise, but it quickly melted into sudden understanding and compassion.

"Of course, milady. I will fetch you a black one at once. I haven't realised somebody told you already."

"Told me what?"

Anna looked just as confused as Mary felt.

"About Mr Patrick being on the Titanic."

Mary looked at her incomprehensibly, but before she could ask why in the world Anna was bringing up that ancient story her maid already was busy with searching for mourning attire. Which shouldn't have taken her so long, because at six months mark black clothes were practically the only ones in her wardrobe.

Which, come to think of it, was not in this old dressing room, but in the set of rooms she had shared with Matthew.

Anna came back with a black dress and Mary's confusion and sense of unreality only increased. It was an old dress, a cut and fashion clearly from at least ten years before, from before the war. However much Mary had been mostly disinterested in her appearance since Matthew's death, her mourning clothes had been ordered and arranged by Cora to be of the modern cuts she usually preferred. There was no need to search for some of her old ones, which should have been disposed of years ago. And yet here was one of those dresses and it looked pristine and new, not at all like a garment which had spent a decade with mothballs.

Not to mention the fact that Anna was also carrying a corset. A proper, pre-war corset.

Mary started to wonder if she was really awake at all. Then she looked into the mirror of her vanity and she was sure she couldn't be.

The face she saw was rounder, fuller, even a bit more childish than the angular, sharp one she was used to seeing every day. Her body, while slim and willowy, was also fuller than she got used to, barely being able to eat after Matthew's death. To put it simply, she was looking at some past version of herself, while finding herself in her old bedroom, with Anna dressed in her old uniform, bringing her clothes ten years out of fashion and mentioning Patrick and the Titanic. It was definitely a dream, but one more realistic than she had ever experienced.

She allowed Anna to dress her in the pre-war clothes, more out of stupor than any conscious decision and went downstairs for breakfast. Her sense of strangeness and unease slowly increased on the way to the morning room. The house didn't exactly look different, but there were subtle changes all over it. Or, more accurately, changes were missing. There was no telephone in the hall. The lampshades were different – or rather they were ones she remembered from her adolescence. A hurrying footman who looked very much like William, but she really only saw his back, so she couldn't be sure. A housemaid she noticed passing in the distance looked very much like the one who left to become a secretary, what was her name... Hannah? Jenny? She could not recall. She was too far to be sure though, so Mary discounted it as memory playing tricks on her.

But she could not discount what she saw in the breakfast room.

Because in front of her was Sybil, Sybil who was dead, except she clearly wasn't. She was so impossibly young, with her hair long and down, clearly a girl not yet out, not an adult married woman who had died giving birth to her child. Whatever explanations Mary could contrive for all the bizarre occurrences of this strange morning there was nothing, nothing, that could explain Sybil not only raising from the dead, but also looking years younger than she had any right to be.

She was either having a hyper realistic and very weird dream or she actually had fallen down the rabbit hole.

And somehow, impossibly, ended in her past. On a day they all learnt of Patrick and James's deaths, apparently.

She had to reach for the sideboard for support. She felt distinctly dizzy.

"Mary, are you alright?" cried Sybil with concern, "You went awfully pale!"

"I am just... shocked," managed Mary through her choked throat. To hear Sybil's voice again!

"We all are," said Sybil with compassion, "But it must be even worse for you."

Mary noticed Edith's glare at her for that. Ah, here they were again, dealing with her silly crush on Patrick. Mary might have been more compassionate about that, knowing grief herself now, but she was not going to forget what role Edith's feelings played in the whole affair of Major Gordon, just when Matthew was at his lowest. Or forgive her sister for it while they were at it. Her sister, who also looked so impossibly young, a bit childish even. Another proof that dream or not, she was seeing the past. The past when nobody was surprised to see her in black, because her fiancé just died. When it actually had happened she had shocked them by not willing to go into mourning, even though they had known or suspected she did not care for Patrick all that much.

Still, it suddenly occurred to her that the assumption she had to grieve for her fiancé, however unofficial their engagement had been, the assumption which caused her so much annoyance previously, was pretty convenient right now. Grieving people were allowed to act strange; she knew from bitter experience that she would be treated with kid gloves and forgiven for any lapses of temper or behaviour, and until she made sense of this mad situation in which she somehow found herself, this would be a huge help.

"I don't know what to do now," she answered slowly and sincerely, "It all feels completely unreal."

She felt Sybil embracing her warmly and it took all she had to stop herself from bursting into sobs. Her kind, compassionate sister, truly the best of them! How had she longed for her comfort in all those horrible months of grief!

And then it hit her – if Sybil was alive, if she herself was somehow transported to the past – than so must be Matthew.

And that was the moment she fainted.

Mary woke up again in her bed and her first thought was panic at the reasonable conclusion that it all was only a bizarre, wish-fulfilling dream. But before she could complete this thought fully, she noticed again the red walls and darling Sybil at her bedside, and she sunk back into the pillows gratefully. However unbelievable the scenario she was suddenly facing, it was a million times better than the life she had left behind.

Sybil and Matthew alive!

"You're awake!" exclaimed her sister brightly, "I must tell Mama and Papa. They are worried sick, Papa left to bring up Doctor Clarkson and Mama just has stepped out for a minute."

"How long was I out?" asked Mary groggily. Her head was splitting.

"Just long enough to be brought back here, but you scared us silly. You never faint, it was always Edith."

Mary smirked, despite her headache. She did take as much pride in being strong and healthy as Edith did in being a delicate English rose who indeed was known to faint sometimes when overheated, especially if her corset was laced too tightly in futile attempt to achieve her older sister's figure.

Before she was able to make a biting remark on that topic, Doctor Clarkson and her parents entered the room. Cora ran to her eldest daughter, visibly relieved seeing her awake.

"Oh my darling, you scared us so! How do you feel?"

"Quite well, I just have a headache," answered Mary, allowing herself to sink into her mother's arms.

"I wanted to be the one to tell you, Mary," said Papa with concerned frown. "I am not sure who broke the news, but obviously they did it poorly."

"I'm afraid the manner of breaking the news would not make much difference, Papa," answered Mary, not wanting to bring her father's wrath unfairly on some servant, most probably Anna. "It wouldn't change the message."

"From what I heard, you just received quite a shock, Lady Mary," said the doctor grievously. "Most likely there isn't anything more to your fainting spell but let me examine you to make sure."

After a short examination Mary was indeed pronounced to be in excellent health but recommended to rest and to be handled delicately until she had time to absorb the news. Mary was never so glad to be left alone and given time to think.

She didn't dwell on hows and whys of her apparent time travel. She had no idea how that had come to pass, so she saw no use in pondering it and pragmatically focused on her current situation and plans for the nearest future. Her fainting and insistence on wearing black had made great headway in convincing everybody – with a possible and glaring exemption of Edith – that she was truly attached to Patrick after all and grieving him sincerely. That should get her off the hook for any lapses which might result from her being ten years into her past and all the details she had forgotten or learnt since then. This should make her tide over until Matthew arrived five months later – he did arrive in September, didn't he? - and then...

And then what? How would she get him to love her again, while greeting him as a grieving woman, mourning her poor drowned fiancé?

Mary frowned. Even if she were out of mourning by then – there were no real timetables for mourning a fiancé, unlike a husband – it would be rather poor taste and likely counterproductive to throw herself at the next heir a moment he stepped a foot in the house. She remembered Matthew's comment about having the Earl's daughters pushed on him, a source of fond amusement between them for years, and she had no intention of doing the expected pushing, probably just resulting in him running back to Manchester. At the same time there was no way she could repeat her original hostility to him. She rather imagined hiding her love for him was going to be nightmarish and near on impossible, so she had to somehow ensure that he loved her back as soon as possible and all was permitted. But how was she to achieve such a thing? She made a miserable mess of their courtship before and frankly she had no idea what she had done to make Matthew fall in love with her – it was clearly not her intention at the time. For heavens' sake, she had not even idea when she herself really had fallen in love with him, she was so busy seeing him as an usurper and an enemy that she only realised it when she obviously had been deeply in love for quite some time.

She put her head in her hands and moaned. It really seemed like a hopeless business.

Well, she thought with renewed determination, she would just have to play it by ear. She obviously couldn't pursue him too actively, but she could be nice to him and not get out of her way to antagonize him. Although maybe he deserved this one comparison to a sea monster, if he again showed up with such obvious distaste for them all. He really was rather insufferable in the beginning. She could work on being nice afterwards.

Thinking of afterwards brought forward the perspective of the war, but Mary shied away from it immediately. The war was still over two years in the future and there was no point in worrying about it yet, especially since she didn't have any chance to do anything about it. The war would happen, come what may, and the only thing she had to focus on was to make sure she and Matthew were married before it started. There was no way in hell she was going to let him be involved with Lavinia.

Feeling better at having made a plan, even so very rudimentary one, she started to wonder idly what else she could actually change and nearly sat up in shock remembering one event which could in fact completely change the course of her life.

She did not know or care when and if Kemal Pamuk was going to die, but this time, it would not be in her bed.