A.N. Trigger warning: miscarriage, obviously. Nothing graphic, but a good deal of trauma.

Sarah had already turned around; she was already taking her first step back toward the connecting door, was already asking her mistress, inwardly begging her, to wait when she heard the soft splash of water in the bath. And then the scream. Her heart sank in her chest in time with the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the floor. Too late. Blood drummed in her ears, and for a couple of seconds – the longest two seconds in her life – she remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to think. Too late. Then she rushed into the bathroom as fast as her legs would carry her, nearly tripping over herself in her haste to get to Cora.

Her guilty heart nearly stopped at the sight of the countess, lying on the floor next to the bath and sobbing as she clutched at her stomach protectively.

Deep down, Sarah instantly knew with unshakable certainty that the worst had just happened, but her whole being rebelled against the unbearable truth, clinging desperately to the hope that nothing was amiss and that Lady Grantham would be perfectly fine just as soon as she had gotten over the shock. She had to be. They both had to be. After all, it wasn't like Cora had tumbled down the stairs. Surely, the fall couldn't have been as terrible as it had sounded. Babies didn't die that easily while in the safety of their mothers' wombs now. Did they? What in God's name had possessed her to do something so stupid, so nasty, something so... life-threatening?

Sarah was at Cora's side in a second, kneeling down on the cold, soaked floor and gently shaking her shoulder.

"Milady, how are you feeling? Are you in pain?"

She heard the words come out of her mouth as if it were someone else speaking. How could she sound so cool and composed when inside she was falling apart? Her eyes frantically scanned Cora's naked body, searching for any injury, any odd angle of her lithe limbs. She couldn't see very well with the countess curled in on herself like this.

"Can you move?"

Sarah couldn't suppress a sigh of relief when Lady Grantham turned her head to look at her, her eyes shockingly lucid despite her tears. There was so much hurt in that look, and so much candid trust that Sarah felt her thorny heart break to pieces.

Cora nodded wordlessly and reached for her like a helpless child, wincing in pain as more tears rolled down her cheeks. Sarah helped her up and, grabbing her upper arms, attempted to steer her toward the chair by the window. She resisted.

"Milady?"

For a moment, the countess merely stood before her, eyes closed as she drew in a shaky breath. Then she slowly shook her head, looking back at her with glistening eyes and wiping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand in a distinctly unladylike gesture.

"I'm fine, O'Brien. I slipped on something, I think... I fell forward. I think… my arm took the brunt of the fall..."

Sarah immediately released her grasp, mortified at the thought of unintentionally hurting Cora. Of hurting her even more, the voice in her head mercilessly corrected. Why should Sarah even trouble herself over something so trivial after the terrible, very deliberate harm she had just caused her mistress?

Lady Grantham was shivering in the cool air. Sarah snatched her towel from the back of the chair, wrapping it over her shoulders with as delicate a gesture as she could manage. Gooseflesh had broken over Cora's skin, but that was not what caught Sarah's attention as she looked at her wet body…

She must have landed hard on her right side.

The skin on her thigh and stomach was an angry shade of red, with the sharp peak of her hipbone standing out even more with how dark it was. Even as Sarah looked, she could have sworn it was turning purplish under her very eyes.

Then there was also her forearm. Sarah could already tell that the nasty bruise to come would stretch uniformly from wrist to elbow.

The rush of shame felt like she had just been punched in the stomach. Wasn't this precisely the punishment she had ardently wished upon her a few minutes ago?

Sarah O'Brien, this is who you are now.

"I slipped," Lady Grantham repeated uselessly. The sudden faraway look in her eyes was unnerving.

"You should lie down, Milady," Sarah said, and offered the dazed Cora her arm.

It was at that moment that it all started – the countess flinched and doubled over, grabbing her stomach once again. When she straightened up, she was pale as a sheet.

"I'll ring and have someone fetch the doctor immediately," Sarah said and struggled not to give in to the swell of panic that threatened to engulf her.

"Yes, it would be preferable if he were to come right away."

Sarah had already rung, assisted Cora in drying off, and she had just finished helping her into her drawers when she flinched again. A trickle of blood slowly ran down her thigh, staining the pure white silk.

The violent spasms that had begun while they were still in the bathroom racked Cora's body with merciless, tell-tale regularity as she lay on her bed, waiting for Dr Clarkson's arrival. Sarah, who had seen her own mother suffer through four deliveries and a late miscarriage, already knew that, doctor or not, there would be no saving the child now.

Lady Grantham herself must have been aware of it, because she had started to weep bitterly in between the contractions, fresh tears seeping from her tightly-shut eyes as she begged for God not to take her baby away. Each of her pleas pierced through Sarah like a knife, chipping away at the last of her composure, until she could do nothing but stand helplessly beside the bed, holding Cora's hand in hers as her own tears slid down her face.

Anna was in the room with them somehow, although Sarah didn't even remember her coming in, and was going about her business in strained silence, setting a basin full of water on a side table, dropping a pile of towels on the other side of the bed...

Sarah wanted nothing more than to let go of Lady Grantham's cold, clammy hand and flee, far away from Downton Abbey, away from this nightmare she herself had created, but she couldn't bring herself to move, even though she felt as if she would die if she stayed here a minute longer. In the end there was nowhere to run when the one thing she really wanted to escape was herself. And so Sarah remained exactly where she was, crying as Cora moaned and writhed in pain. Through the haze in her mind, she could hear herself talk to her mistress as from afar.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she was jabbering. She never did tell her why, but it hardly mattered since she doubted any word she was speaking registered on the broken woman.

When the doctor finally arrived, Sarah instinctively meant to back away, but Lady Grantham's fingers clenched around hers, hard enough to make her wince, as another endless wave of tension rippled through her body, making her scream in anguish. When it finally ebbed away and she sank back down into the mattress, Cora's eyes, wide with hurt and terror, locked with Sarah's in a silent prayer, and all selfish thoughts of retreat instantly vanished. Sarah could not leave her, not when she was like this, not when she knew that had she been sensible enough to pause and think twice before lashing out, none of this would be happening.

Cora's ordeal went on for hours, and she had long lost the strength to scream by the time Dr Clarkson motioned for Anna to pass him a towel and leaned down between her legs. Her knees were bent, and the sheet they had laid over her thighs to keep up the illusion of modesty blocked Sarah's view. As he straightened up, the only thing she was able to see was the neat little bundle he had gathered in his hands, but she couldn't help but picture the tiny being inside, wondering if it still had a pulse. The doctor immediately turned his back on the bed, probably so he could examine it without Lady Grantham seeing, and after a while shook his head. He whispered something to Anna, handing her the baby still wrapped in its towel.

"Lady Grantham", he started, and Cora's exhausted eyes fixed on him, "The worst is behind you now. The contractions should gradually wear off over the next hour or so. I'm going to examine you..."

The doctor looked between Sarah and Anna, and he must have been preparing to give them instructions as to how they should tend to the countess when Cora spoke, her voice almost too weak to be heard.

"It was a boy, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he answered, and Lady Grantham's breath hitched audibly. "Yes, it was. I am sorry."

Ever since she had learnt that she was pregnant, Cora had been persuaded that she would give birth to another female, even complaining once that she had 'only ever been good at making girls'. Sarah assumed that something in the doctor's attitude had aroused her suspicion – maybe she believed he would have told her right away if it hadn't been a boy. Obviously he knew that this late pregnancy had been the couple's last chance to beget a direct heir to the title and estate.

Then she heard Lady Grantham's low murmur.

"Of course, it was. I could never give him a living son, right Mama...?"

Cora's eyes closed again briefly, and she drew a shaky breath.

"Let me see him..."

Doctor Clarkson looked back at her, visibly taken aback by the request.

"My son... I want to see him," Cora insisted.

"Lady Grantham, this is somewhat unusual. I'm not really sure that-"

"Just let her see it!"

Sarah's voice cracked as she snapped at him, and Dr Clarkson gave her a reproachful look. She moved across the room and took the bundle of cloth out of Anna's unresisting hands, gazing at the floor to avoid meeting the young woman's sharp eyes. The small weight of the baby in her cupped palms was almost unbearable.

Clarkson was missing the point completely, she could plainly see it... He might have been a specialist of the human body, yet he knew nothing of the workings of his patient's heart. He hadn't seen the countess stroke the curve of her belly as it started to round; he hadn't been there to hear her coo and whisper to it softly when she had thought Sarah wasn't listening. All this she had done even while believing the baby was a girl. Dr Clarkson didn't know that, to Cora, the little being maturing inside her had always been much more than a potential earl in the making.