Many thanks to HamiltonAsparagus for your lovely review

A/N: I've changed the timeline a little in the next couple of chapters.

***chapter 12***

My Darling Edward

"I remember so well when I walked on to the ward that terrible, terrible morning. Dr Clarkson was just moving away from your bed and my heart lifted when I saw the bandages were off your beautiful blue eyes at last. And for a wonderful moment I imagined everything we spoke of was going to come true. I'd hand in my notice at Downton Abbey. We'd move abroad. Find a home – not too grand, we said, somewhere we would be anonymous -and live out our lives in happiness and contentment. It was only as I got closer I saw those beautiful blue eyes were shining with tears..."

Thomas screwed up the letter he would never send. Edward Courtenay was dead. Nothing would bring him back. And it was weak and dangerous to reveal his emotions. He was hated here at Downton and anybody could use it against him. Well, anybody being Sarah O'Brien.

The other servants might gossip about him, regard him with dislike and distrust, make barbed comments about his "perversions"- Jesus, did it never occur to any of them how much being hated hurt? He might have a sarcastic comment to bite back with every single time, but he was still a human being with feelings, for Christ's sake! Not that you'd know it, not from the way this lot carried on. Maybe he didn't help himself with his arrogance, but that was his defence mechanism and prompted by their hate. Swings and roundabouts, Kate would have said, swings and roundabouts. And "give a dog a bad name and hang him". Or perhaps even "if the cap fits, wear it". She had a saying for every occasion, did Kate. He wondered what she would have said about Miss O'Brien.

Because Sarah O'Brien took hatred to another level. Her revenge for his petty attempts to undermine her nephew after she persuaded Carson to hire Alfred as footman, knowing full well Thomas was next in line for the job, would have, if she had succeeded in her efforts, cost him his home and livelihood, sent him to jail and ensured he would never work again. Fortunately, Jimmy Kent didn't want to press charges after Thomas, stupidly believing Miss O'Brien's lies about Jimmy being keen on him, made a pass. Things had settled down somewhat since then. Alfred was gone to train as a chef in a top hotel and his aunt would be leaving for India next week, having accepted a position elsewhere. Their partnership would never recover from its earthquake-sized schism, however.

Ironic how everyone assumed Miss O'Brien and Mr Barrow to have rekindled their splintered friendship. They had never been friends in the first place. During their smoking breaks a good distance away from the House, in between the rubbish bins and the garden sheds where they could be sure of a private conversation, they discovered they both regarded most of the Household staff as the enemy and therefore could prove useful to each other. That Thomas Barrow disliked Sarah O'Brien and Sarah O'Brien disliked Thomas Barrow was conveniently overlooked in the interests of mutual gain.

She would be leaving for India with her new employer next week, thank God. No more being constantly on his guard around someone as devious and cunning as himself. Give O'Brien an inch and she'd take a mile. He smiled wryly. There you go, he knew he'd come up with another of his sister's saying if he waited long enough.

The ladies maid had caught him once setting fire to a previous letter to Edward.

"What's that you're burning?" She tried to make it sound friendly, jokey even, but she couldn't hide the gleeful spite in those sharp, bird-like eyes.

"My life," he replied enigmatically, to pique her curiosity. He had finished his smoke and was due back inside. He smirked as he heard hear her poking around among the crumbling pieces of charred paper in the ash holder as soon as his back was turned. Let her waste her time. There was nothing left to find.

Except in his heart.

And there would be no more letters.

Except inside his head.

Pale sunlight was streaming inside his poky, quiet room, lending an unexpected warmth to the cold spring day and catching dust motes in its wake, and Thomas rose from the small writing table to open a window. Jimmy Kent happened to be strolling below in the lazy, cocky way that characterised Jimmy and he toyed with the idea of throwing a penny down just to startle him. Nope, probably not a wise move. Jimmy would see the funny side and no doubt try and chuck something back, but Carson would have something to say about if if he saw.

They were buddies now, him and Jimmy, despite their early misunderstanding, when he believed the new footman had feelings for him and chanced a tender kiss that, to his shock and horror, had Jimmy yelling and screaming as though he was being murdered. That kiss was all down to O'Brien stirring her cauldron. She would be thousands of miles away and out of his hair forever soon, but she taught him a valuable lesson. Never trust anyone ever again.

His wistful gaze followed his golden-haired friend until he was almost lost from sight among the majestic trees that lined the extensive grounds of the Abbey. He could still taste that kiss, feel again that euphoria of hope and desire so quickly and cruelly dashed. If only he'd felt the same way about Thomas. But he didn't and he never could. Jimmy was not a homosexual. Not a pervert nor a queen nor a faggot, nor any of the other dozens of derogatory names they gave to people like Thomas. At least he had his friendship, though, and he treasured it. Except for their preferences, they were kindred spirits in many ways, with their similar sense of humour and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly. Thomas had remarked one time on how they were alike in yet another way, that underneath their outward air of confidence they were both so unsure of themselves. Jimmy didn't deny it, but he didn't confirm it either and now that he knew him better, he realised he said nothing not because he agreed, but simply because he was too lazy to argue. James Albert Kent had confidence in spades. Nothing daunted Jimmy, nothing dented his belief in himself, nothing anyone told him ever caused him a moment's concern. But, good mates or not, there were secrets Thomas would always keep to himself. Like how he ached with loneliness. Even after all these years.

Although he tried to convince himself otherwise, it wasn't true that, until Jimmy Kent, everybody at Downton Abbey treated him with contempt. Lady Sybil had been different. They built up a strong and, he thought, unbreakable friendship, Lady Sybil, Edward Courtenay and Thomas, when he worked as a medic at the cottage hospital. The Crawleys and Dr Clarkson aside, nobody knew him from his life before and he slipped easily into a new identity they would never have recognised.

Thomas Barrow became someone who cared.

A few patients even assumed he was a doctor and addressed him as such. Dr Clarkson had not been amused when Bob Andrews, the bloke brought in with his right leg peppered with bullets, and which they knew they would have to amputate sooner or later, asked could he have a second opinion "from Dr Barrow, as he'd been out there in No Man's Land so he knew a helluva lot more about Blighty wounds". Teddy wiped away tears of laughter when Thomas told how Dr Clarkson looked like he was about to have an apoplectic fit and…

Teddy. Do you mind me still thinking of you as Teddy? When I first used the name, you said nobody had called you Teddy since Nurse Williams when you were a very small boy. And then you launched into one of your crazy stories…

Thomas stifled a poignant laugh. He didn't like being called Teddy back then, Edward Courtenay claimed, because people might believe he was a real live teddy bear. In his defence, he pointed out, he was barely two years old. And then he described how he'd held his breath until Nurse Williams promised never to call him Teddy again and gave him some sweets to placate him, but he ate so many he threw up all over her uniform while playing on his rocking horse.

My love, you would have been twelve years old when Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear cub*, a damn sight too bloody old for teddy bears! But you loved to spin your yarns, as the Yanks say, didn't you? Because, you said, there was enough sadness in the world. And, you whispered, our fingers brushing when no-one saw, you liked to hear me call you Teddy, though. We had grown so close in just a short while, you and I. And that morning I walked on to the ward so full of happiness and dreams of our future, the same morning Dr Clarkson announced your beautiful blue eyes were too damaged to save and your blindness was permanent.

Nothing more could be done for him at the cottage hospital, and as beds were urgently needed for those they could help, Dr Clarkson glibly informed the young lieutenant, he would be transferred to a convalescent home in Scotland as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made.

Edward Courtenay spiralled into a deep depression after that and nothing Thomas or Sybil Crawley did or said could reassure and pull him out of the black abyss he dug in his mind. No more jokes or laughter or amusing tales of his childhood. He focussed only on his losses. He would never be able to hunt, fish or shoot, never admire the beauty of nature, never sketch or see again the dramatic landscapes he had once so cherished. Just as he had begun to recover from the trauma of the battlefield, he was being torn away from Thomas and Sybil, the two people who had helped him most in that recovery.

They went together to try and persuade Clarkson to keep him at the hospital, to explain that his depression would worsen if he were moved, but the doctor was adamant. They were overcrowded as it was, lots of soldiers did better away from an environment of sick people, he needed to learn how to live independently and not rely so heavily on others. In fact, he had been extremely unhappy with the attention nurse and medic had bestowed upon a favourite at the expense of other patients, he admonished.

My darling, darling Teddy, did you think I could never love you enough to care for you? I would have stayed by your side forever. I still think about you all the time, when I hear a certain song, when someone lights up a Woodbine, whenever I smell apples. And there's always someone, somewhere smoking Woodbines, some old soldier whistling It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary. And apples, they've always been easy to come by here, the Abbey orchard's full of 'em, the reason the stewed apple you were so fond of was on the hospital menu almost every day. I loved you...and you left me…

Thomas choked back a sob – dear Jesus, if anyone walking past his room heard him cry! - pressed his fingertips against his eyelids before any telltale tears could fall, drew a deep, shuddering sigh and cast away his dreams. He was on duty soon and nothing must spoil the facade he presented to the world.

He strode over to the mirror, fixed his collar, tugged down his sleeves, spat on his comb and tamed some stray hairs back into place. An image of perfection. Robotic, even. Not a hint, not a whisper of how Lieutenant Edward Courtenay's death haunted him still.

*The teddy bear is named after US President Theodore Roosevelt, who refused to shoot a bear cub in 1902