Note: This chapter may seem slightly repetitive because O'Brien's part of the story overlaps with Alfred's.
However they're not completely the same, and after chapter 2 it won't overlap/repeat anymore. Thanks.
CHAPTER 2: O'BRIEN
O'Brien had worked on Alfred for a while, trying this way and that to get him to reach a point where he would be agreeable to the idea of talking to the police about Thomas.
For a while she thought it was a lost cause.
It wasn't that Alfred wasn't against what Thomas had done, it was more that he simply wanted to forget what he had seen and move on.
But O'Brien wasn't going to give up that easily. She worked on him and worked on him until at last she found a soft spot.
She'd seen the way his eyes flickered when she brought up the hallboys.
Just the slightest hint of trepidation, of hesitation, of doubt.
And that was all she needed.
She laid into him, then, about the hallboys, about what young, innocent boys they were, and how Downton was their very first situation, their first time away from their mother's arms-
And she'd found his weak spot, the thing that could break him.
So she continued:
How would it be, then, to force these young, innocent boys to live in a house of ill repute-a house occupied by a man who steals into the bedrooms of young men and does the unthinkable?
How could Alfred look the other way and go on as if nothing was out of the ordinary? How could he?
How many more people would have to be hurt before Alfred would step up and do the right thing?
He'd witnessed it, for God's sake. He had to act.
What about the hallboys?
What.
About.
The.
Hall.
Boys?
And that had been the line that sealed the deal.
Alfred used the phone in Carson's study to ring the police. And with the hallboys in mind, he didn't even feel guilty.
O'Brien smiled. Her first real smile in quite some time, and it stretched her lips thin.
The hallboys had never been in any danger. But Alfred didn't need to know that.
The purpose to life was to get what you want. And O'Brien made that her ultimate goal.
She was getting quite good at it, really.
Oh, she didn't relish the thought of ruining Thomas. It was just that he was so easy to ruin. He'd really brought it on himself, you know.
He was no match for her. He thought he was- he thought he was smarter, more cunning, more sly. But he wasn't.
And she had something else, too, something he didn't have.
He had given it to her, back when they'd first become friends. Or allies, a better term for what they were, perhaps.
He'd given it to her a little bit at a time, and much of it she'd picked up on herself.
Eventually, he had told her, freely, of his own will.
But by then she'd already known.
She'd been trusted. Trusted more than she'd ever been, and more than she likely would be again.
He had called her a friend. Said she'd been the first he'd had, really. She remembered that line being said in the courtyard as his cigarette was put out.
And- as she thought with a dark smile-: Isn't a friend the person you go to with your deepest secret?
He had shared it with her- his secret- powerful enough to get him imprisoned, powerful enough to get him killed.
He gave it to her- practically on a silver platter.
It had been hers and hers alone.
Poor Thomas, he thought that he gave the secret to her to be held. Quiet, and dark, like a shade drawn over a window.
But O'Brien didn't see it that way.
To her, the secret was given to her and she may do with it whatever she pleased.
With it, she would destroy him.