Home Again, But It's Somebody Else's Home, and You're Going There for the First Time
When a man left the fleet, along with his last paycheck, he was given one thing for free: passage to any planet within the Empire. When he filled out his paperwork before his discharge from the military hospital, Thomas's hand had hovered over the choices. He could go back home.
But he wasn't going to.
There was absolutely nothing waiting for him on the planet he had originally embarked from, and this was the next logical step, after the fleet, to changing his life. He had an honorable discharge (medical, wounded in service) so he wouldn't be barred from employment like people who were sent out of the fleet for various infractions- drug use and the like- and he had survived. That was more than a lot of people could say, so Thomas would take it.
He had originally gone into the fleet to escape his backwater home planet. With no further hesitation, he entered Odin into the form, then sat back, satisfied, at the desk in his small hospital room. He had said he would get to Odin, after all.
So, when they discharged him from the military hospital, he was packed on a a military transport, and then dumped unceremoniously onto the capital's streets, with truly nothing other than his small bag of possessions containing little more than the few non-uniform outfits he owned and had been carrying with him for the duration of his service.
When Thomas stepped out of the spaceport on Odin, he was briefly overwhelmed. He hadn't been on a planet in nearly two years, so the bright sunlight moderated by the atmosphere and the early fall breeze stopped him hin his tracks. He hadn't felt wind, real wind- not too-strong ventilation, not the sucking of a vacuum pulling air through a ship, not the chimney effect of a confined space fire- in so long that he had almost forgotten how to breathe it in. When the air buffeted his face, it shocked him and he struggled to take a breath.
He squinted in the morning light, then wandered over to stand beneath a tree and took out his cigarettes, the ones he had bought in the spaceport as soon as he had gotten off the ship. Even the fleet hadn't managed to cure him of the habit, though it had certainly tried. He couldn't buy cigarettes at the commissary, of course, and any found in his belongings (or worse, in his hands) would have been taken as contraband and punished accordingly, but there was always someone who managed to sneak them on board a ship, and Thomas paid the price he had to. And someone always knew spots on the ship where the air filtration would suck the smoke away before it could be picked up by the detectors, or where the smoke detectors had been rendered useless. They had nicotine gum and ten different kinds of other mild stimulants available, either in the rations or at the commissary, but that wasn't the same. There was a ritual to finding the lighter and cigarette, to steadying the shake in his hands enough that he could light it, to taking the first drag.
His left hand was stiff, covered by a leather glove, but that didn't stop it from trembling. He hated the way the grafted skin was too tight, and the way that every sensation felt muted, and the new clumsiness in the limb. He tried not to think about it.
Thomas watched people pass by: families greeted their returning sons, or cried after their departing ones. There was no one to greet Thomas, just like there hadn't been anyone to see him sent off in the first place. He didn't mind that so much.
Thomas had never been to any kind of major city before, aside from his time in Iserlohn Fortress, so the variety and number of people going by was unfamiliar to him. And Iserlohn hardly counted as a city, since it was purely military in function, and the civilians who lived there were all working in service of the fleet. Its few streets still had the unmistakable sensation of being in an enclosed space, and it only took walking a little way away from that main concourse to find oneself back in narrow hallways, brushing past streams of soldiers hurrying this way and that, each with some urgent task to fulfil.
With his right hand, he fingered the bills in his pocket, the cash he had taken his last pay in. There wasn't much of it. Strange how, even when on a ship, with nowhere to go and nothing much to spend money on, Thomas had managed to earn very little. His reserves would last him a couple weeks in a hotel, at most, and he would have to find a job before he could put his name on a lease. He supposed this was why most people went back home after their service, instead of trying their luck in the capital. If a man didn't get lucky, he would end up worse off than when he started.
He didn't know his way around, so after his cigarette burned down to a stub that he crushed under his heel, he picked a direction and started walking towards the city. No one paid him ay mind whatsoever. He would find what he needed to find, he was sure of it. There had to be something on this planet for a man who was willing to go and get it.
Two and a half weeks later, in a motel room with walls so thin he could hear every word of his neighbor's conversations, Thomas admitted to himself that he was going to have to try a different tack. That didn't mean he was giving up on a new life on Odin, but he was going to need to alter his expectations. Though he had assumed that his discharge from the fleet would have been enough to assure employers that he was a reasonably upright man, it was turning out to be less the case than Thomas had hoped. After all, every able man in the Empire served in the fleet, and the people he had spoken with tended to take one look at his gloved hand, and smile in the polite way that didn't reach their eyes. He had to wonder, if it had been his right hand that had been wounded, would they have refused to shake it?
In any event, Thomas had reached the tail end of his cash reserves, and he needed a job that would give him a cash advance, or a place to stay. There was only one of those that he was relatively sure existed, and which would hire him, though it grated to ask. It was, at least, approaching the time when the Crawley family would be on Odin for the season, so he was sure that the Odin house staff would be looking for temporary, seasonal hires. It was unclear in his mind if it was preferable to be a seasonal hire and leave at the end of the few months with a reference in hand, or if he would try to leverage his employment to a permanent, travelling role. That would entail going back home, and would be a step in the wrong direction, but-
He was getting ahead of himself. He would figure that out when he saw the conditions on the ground, what the house was like, what the season itself was like. He still had choices; he wasn't going to get fooled into thinking he didn't.
The Crawley house on Odin was a far bit away from the capital city, out in the woods, and the cost of the ticket on the train to the nearest village was enough that Thomas decided to walk from the station to the house, rather than trying to call and pay for a cab. It was a several mile walk, along thin, winding roads. But at least the day was neither cold nor unseasonably warm, and he didn't mind the walk. He had not called ahead; he thought it might be better to make a plea in person.
Surprisingly, when he turned down the drive that went to the Crawley house, further back in the woods, several cars whizzed past him. Was the house occupied already? Perhaps the family had come early. Well, all the better. They were sure to need more hands urgently, then.
Indeed, as he approached the great house, standing out in heavy grey stone against the surrounding greenery, there were all manner of gardeners and staff walking about, tending the lawns or moving between the outbuildings and the main house. Thomas was ignored completely as he walked around the back, looking for the servants' entrance. If all of the staff were here, his best chance was to find Herr Carson, the butler, who was responsible for hiring of the male staff.
The door at the rear of the house was propped open, and so Thomas slipped inside, finding himself in the cool, dark half-basement level that was the servants' domain in every like house. It was hardly any different from the Grantham country estate, except Thomas had no idea where all the hallways led. He was sure he would figure it out soon enough; the house couldn't be as labyrinthine as all that.
Voices echoed softly down the halls, and Thomas stuck his hands in his pockets and walked towards them, projecting an air of confidence and belonging.
Before he reached the gathered group of people, a door creaked open into the hallway, and a broad shouldered man with an unpleasant face stepped out. He had a cane in one hand, and was carrying a pair of riding boots in his other. He came up short when he saw Thomas.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice harsh and suspicious.
"Thomas Barrow," Thomas replied. "I'm here to see Herr Carson."
"Who let you in?"
"The door was open."
"So you just walked through?"
"I'm looking for Herr Carson. Figured he'd likely be down here, or somebody'd be down here who could let him know I'm looking for him."
"What business do you have with him?"
"None of yours," Thomas said. "He's still the butler of this house, isn't he?"
"Herr Carson may be the butler of this estate, but the estate belongs to the Lord Grantham, and you, a stranger, have entered it without any invitation."
"I'm not a stranger. Herr Carson knows me." He might have been better off being obsequious to this man, but there was something about his bearing, the way his knuckles were white on his cane, the way his voice was so angry already when Thomas had done nothing wrong, that made him quirk his lips in a half smile, unintimidated, his own voice fresh and calm.
"I suggest that you leave," the man said.
"And if my business is so urgent that Herr Carson would be unhappy you turned me away without letting him hear what it was?"
"You haven't stated your business."
"Nor you, yours," Thomas said. "I know who I need to speak to, and you haven't given me a reason why it should be you, instead."
"I suggest you leave. Now."
"I suggest you get Herr Carson." Thomas kept his smile on his face. "I don't know who you are, but I know you're not the butler."
Another door opened down the hall, making the muffled sounds of conversation suddenly clear, and causing both the man and Thomas to glance down the hallway. Frau Hughes, the housekeeper, was coming out of the kitchen, accompanied by Lady Mary. They looked down the hall and saw Thomas and the man standing there.
"Thomas Barrow?" Lady Mary asked. "Is that you?"
"Yes, m'lady," Thomas said, smiling.
Frau Hughes and Lady Mary both came towards them, though Frau Hughes seemed somewhat alarmed.
"I thought you were in the fleet for another year, at least," Lady Mary said. "What in Odin's name are you doing here?"
The man next to Thomas was growing more frustrated with every word that Lady Mary spoke, but only Thomas seemed to be aware of the tension in his posture.
"I was discharged, m'lady," Thomas said. "Wounded."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Frau Hughes said. "But, may I ask, what are you doing here?"
"I found myself on Odin, and I had to wonder if you were looking for extra hands, for the season."
"You'll have to speak with Herr Carson about that," Frau Hughes said. "I don't know if he's of a mind to hire more footmen."
"Of course," Thomas said. "I was just looking for him."
"I feel like he must be," Lady Mary said. "Since we're going to be doing so much entertaining this season." There was some odd tone in her voice, one that Thomas was extremely curious about. To Thomas, she said, "I was just speaking to Frau Patmore about the menu for the first party that we'll be having."
Thomas nodded and smiled. "I hope Herr Carson agrees with you, m'lady."
There were now other people leaving the kitchen, including a short young woman who glanced at the group standing in the hallway and began to hurry away nervously. Frau Hughes stopped her. "Daisy, would you fetch Herr Carson? He's in the wine cellar."
"Yes, Frau Hughes," Daisy squeaked, and hurried off.
"There's no need for you to be held up, m'lady," Frau Hughes said. "We'll have this settled, and the menu."
"I'm in no hurry," Mary said. "Thomas- if it's not impolite- what kind of injury got you discharged?"
"A burn, m'lady," Thomas said. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it up, though it was still gloved, not revealing the ugly scar tissue. "All up my arm. I was trying to pull a captain out from where he had been trapped, and my suit arm melted."
He wasn't sure if it was to Mary's credit that she paled slightly, or to Frau Hughes that she showed little reaction. "And you're looking to be a footman?" Frau Hughes asked.
"Or something of the like," Thomas said. "I won't be ugly waiting table, anyway, since footmen wear gloves."
"But you believe you'd be able to perform the tasks of a footman?" Frau Hughes asked. "A medical discharge from the fleet as being unfit for service-"
"Gods," Lady Mary said. "We kept Bates, didn't we?" and she nodded at the man. "If anything, it'll be nice for him to have some company, with his war wound and all." Bates- this was Lord Grantham's valet, then, the one who had replaced Thomas- tried and failed to not look even more angry at Thomas.
"Quite right, m'lady," Frau Hughes said. "Though Herr Carson would like his say."
"I most certainly would," Herr Carson said, appearing down the hallway with the nervous looking Daisy in tow. Daisy scooted back into the kitchen.
"Carson," Lady Mary said. "Surely you remember Thomas."
"Yes, though as I recall, he worked in the country estate, and not here." Carson's voice was brutally dry.
"I'm on Odin now, Herr Carson."
"I see that. And what, exactly, are you doing on Odin?"
"I was wondering if you needed some extra hands for the season."
"I'm sure Lady Mary doesn't need us to relitigate this in the hallway, and you have things to do, Herr Bates," Frau Hughes said.
"Yes," Carson said. "Quite right." He gestured for Thomas to follow him, and gave a nod to Lady Mary. "M'lady."
"It is good to see you again, Thomas," Mary said with a smile, catching Carson's eye as she did. "I'm glad you made it out of the fleet in one piece."
"Thank you," Thomas said. "And mostly, m'lady." He followed Carson off down the hallway.
It had been the brusque and coincidental intervention of Lady Mary that had secured Thomas the job, he was sure, though he didn't feel like he owed her.
Thomas ran into O'brien as he was going to look for a fitting set of livery down in the wardrobe where all those things were kept in the servants' hall. O'brien was walking down the hallway, then stopped in her tracks when she saw him, her face blanching.
"Thomas?" she asked.
"It is," he said, turning towards her. "I made it to Odin after all."
Hastily, she stepped inside the room with all the liveries and shut the door behind herself. "You didn't tell me you were coming back here."
"And why should I have?" he asked. "I didn't expect to."
"What are you doing here, then?"
"I ran out of money."
She made a derisive noise. "Of course. But you're working here, now?"
"Herr Carson's taken me on as a footman, at least for the season."
"First?"
"He didn't say."
O'brien frowned. "William won't like that. He's first." Thomas had no idea who William was, but he didn't think it mattered. It didn't surprise him that whoever had taken his place would be unhappy at his return.
There was a moment of silence as they looked each other over. O'brien didn't look that much different. She had the same permanent scowl lines around her mouth, and she wasn't even doing her tightly brushed hair in a different way. "What've things been like since I've been gone?" Thomas asked.
"Same as usual. Lady Mary's gotten left out in the cold, so all the girls are scrambling to find husbands this season."
"What do you mean?" Thomas flicked some lint off the shoulder of one of the liveries.
"Lord Patrick died. The new heir's some stranger, and Lady Mary has no interest in him."
"Ah."
"And how have you been? I was beginning to think you had died, since you stopped writing."
Thomas silently held up his gloved hand. "Medical discharge. I was in the burn unit for a while."
"Couldn't have written then, could you?"
"And said what?"
She shook her head silently.
"I see you didn't actually get rid of His Lordship's new valet," Thomas pointed out.
"He's not so new, now."
"Doesn't seem like he's the type you could stand to have around."
"There was no point in sticking my neck out to get rid of him, since you had run off for your own stupid reasons," she said. "If you ignore him, he leaves you alone."
"He stopped me in the hallway."
"Don't make trouble, Thomas."
"I want his job."
She looked at him. "You're the new one, now," she said. "Especially around here. You'd better be careful."
"You trying to warn me of something?"
"I'm trying to tell you that if you want something, you might want to be smart about how you go around trying to get it."
"You're not going to help me?"
"Give me a reason why I should."
"No, since you think I'm a stranger, you won't think I have anything worth offering you."
"Right, then," she said. "Suit yourself."
"I did what you said," Thomas said.
"I don't think I told you to go join the fleet."
"You told me not to die," he said. "I didn't do that, at least."
"Fat lot of good it's done you." Her acerbic voice was only to hide whatever true thing she felt towards Thomas. She had looked like she had seen a ghost when she caught sight of him. "How bad is the wound that got you out?"
"Not something that ladies like to see."
She snorted. "And you think I'm a lady? I'm trying to figure out if the first time someone hands you a plate you'll drop it on the ground."
Thomas obliged, rolling up his shirtsleeve and pulling off his glove, revealing pitted and warped red flesh from fingertip to elbow. Compared to the rest of his body, feeling the damp chill of the servants' hall basement, his left arm was a senseless lump, barely part of his body at all. But he curled and uncurled his fingers, demonstrating to O'brien that he could, if barely.
She tried not to look disgusted with it, but she didn't really succeed. Thomas had to wonder: if the arm was not attached to him, if this was someone else's barely healed wound, would he be able to hide his reaction to it? He had seen a lot of wounds when pulling people out of destroyed ships- that was the duty of the medical corps- but those were visceral and fresh and somehow of their element. Everyone in the medical corps expected to see a skull with the brains coming out, or to walk down the hallway and slip on somebody's guts that had spilled onto the floor. But nobody in this house, this pristine place, expected to see Thomas's ruined flesh. It was unnatural, and disturbing. The nobles never wanted to see the reality of the fleet they funded and used to wage war; their servants were shielded from it too, especially the women.
"And Herr Carson's going to let you wait at table with that?" O'brien finally said, the dryness of her mouth clear and present in her voice.
Thomas touched the livery hanging in the wardrobe. "Sleeves cover to the elbow, and footmen wear gloves. Nobody even has to know."
"Right," she said. "Nobody upstairs'll have to think about it at all."
Thomas settled back in to the Grantham estate quickly over the next few days. Aside from the fact that he was on Odin, there was very little different about life working as a servant. Every day had the same routine, and after a few initial glances of surprise from the family upstairs, no one seemed to care that Thomas served their dinner. It wouldn't have mattered who was doing the task, so long as the task got done. All the servants were interchangeable, in that way.
Downstairs was a slightly different story. As O'brien had warned, Thomas had disrupted whatever natural order there was to things. William, the gangly young footman who Thomas had displaced as first, took an instant disliking to him.
After the servants' dinner one night, when a few people were sitting around the table, reading the day's papers or doing small mending tasks, Thomas was drinking a coffee and flipping through a magazine, contemplating the clothing advertisements. Since he had been wearing nothing but uniforms for a long time, he figured that now he was on Odin and earning a steady paycheck, he might like to have something nice to wear when he went into the city. Not that he had much occasion to go into the city, but he figured he would get the chance to, someday.
Daisy, who worked in the kitchen, leaned on her elbows on the table in front of him, looking at him up from her own book. "You've been to Iserlohn Fortress, haven't you?" she asked.
"Sure," Thomas said. William, down at the end of the table, was shooting a nasty look at him, though since all Thomas had done was be an object of Daisy's attention for a moment, he couldn't have said why he deserved that, at least.
"What's it like?" Daisy asked. "I've heard it's huge."
"Don't think it's really some place you'd like to go," William said.
"Why not?" Daisy asked. "There's regular people who live on it, isn't there?"
"There are," Thomas said, flipping to the next page in his magazine. "Plenty. It's a nice place."
"See, I could live there," Daisy said. "Did you like it there?" she asked.
"I liked it alright," Thomas said. "Didn't get to spend too much time walking around, but I did see the gardens. They keep it so it's spring all the time there."
"Gods," Daisy said. "Think of that! It never snows?"
"It's a space station, of course it doesn't snow," William said.
"It rains," Thomas said. "But there wouldn't be any point to making it snow, would there?"
"You've seen a lot of the galaxy, haven't you?" Daisy was fairly enraptured, though Thomas's anodyne answers truly didn't deserve that level of attention. Still, the fact that it was making William seethe was fairly funny. Thomas didn't mind egging him on.
"I've seen enough."
"I've never been off Odin."
"I'm happy to have gotten here," Thomas said, "so maybe count yourself lucky on that count."
"Oh, I know I should," Daisy said. "But I do have to wonder, well, there's so many interesting places everywhere. I'd love to travel someday, maybe."
"You going back with the family at the end of the season?"
"If Frau Patmore is satisfied with me," Daisy said. "I might. That was what she said when they took me on."
Thomas nodded. "There's worse ways to see the galaxy."
"Have you ever been to Phezzan?" Daisy asked.
"No, never."
"I'd love to see there." The dreamy tone in her voice was endearing, in its way, but childish, mostly.
"My mother says we should all be grateful to be in the places we are," William said.
"Oh, can it, William," Daisy said. "It doesn't hurt to think about what it's like, out there in the rest of the galaxy."
"You ever travelled, William?" Thomas asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
"No," William huffed. "And I don't have much of a mind to, neither."
"No, of course not," Thomas said. "Otherwise, you'd be in the fleet."
"Right," Daisy said. "Why aren't you, William? You're not too old."
"I'm not-"
"No, you got Lord Grantham to sign the paper that says you're vital to the functioning of the estate, so you wouldn't have to. Condition of your employment here, and all," Thomas said. "I know how it goes."
"Did you really do that?" Daisy asked.
"My mother wouldn't want me to-"
"Sure, everybody's mother wouldn't want them to go join the fleet," Thomas said. "It's the lucky few who are able to sneak out of it because they just don't want to go. It takes a certain amount of bravery."
"Did you have to be very brave?" Daisy asked Thomas, leaning further forward.
"Oh, very," Thomas said.
"What did you do in the fleet?" Daisy asked.
"I was-"
It was at this point that Bates walked in, taking in the scene of Daisy on her elbows listening to Thomas, and William seething at the end of the table. He frowned.
"Bates was in the fleet too, weren't you?" William asked. "Why don't you ever ask him about it?"
Bates seemed unenthused about being drawn into this. "Because I am too old to be flirted with by someone Daisy's age," he said. "And you should stop before Frau Patmore has something to say about it."
"It's not illegal for us to talk, Herr Bates," Thomas said. "Is it?"
"No, it's not," Daisy agreed.
"But since you're asking, I served out my tour of duty," Bates said. "I did not leave early."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Thomas asked, setting down his coffee.
"There's plenty of men with injuries just like yours, isn't there?"
William wasn't stupid enough to not be able to piece together what Bates had implied, but Daisy hadn't figured it out. "How did you get hurt then, Thomas?" William asked. "Enough that you'd be able to hold a plate but not a gun?"
Thomas put a thin smile on his face. "If you're so eager to find out the details, I suggest you leave service and enlist. His Majesty's fleet would be more than happy to take an able young man like you." And he shuffled his magazines. "And at least I can hold a plate, and carry suitcases, and do all the tasks I've been hired here to do."
"That's right," Daisy said. "That's why Herr Carson made you first footman."
William scowled.
Author's Note
bit of a shorter chapter, but i mostly needed to establish thomas getting back to work before the actual juicy drama starts going down. bates is somewhat unpleasant. i'm legit very excited to write the next couple chapters of this story though lol. it's going to be a party at which many people have a moderately terrible time, mediated by a few interesting moments. also it will be much more of the intersection between the two casts haha
maybe this chapter could have been longer and touched on a few more things but it's maybe better to not try too hard to jam everything possible in all at once. if i decide i need more here i can always go back and edit it lol. this is the nature of just posting raw first drafts on the internet. hopefully they're still good and fun anyway
um you can find me on tumblr as javert, twitter natsinator, my landing pad for most of my writing is my currently somewhat out of date website gayspaceopera. carrd. co , and you are also free to join my discord discord. gg/2fu49B28nu . please do check out my other writing, including my long logh fic, a wheel inside a wheel (bit. ly/wheelinsideawheel) and the original fiction i'm currently writing, Every Hateful Instrument (here on ao3)