A/N: I cannot honestly promise you this will be the last time I've ever put you through something like that—but believe me when I say that this story has been as painful for me to write as it was for you to read. Thank you for staying with me to the end.
Epilogue
They see each other more often once she starts working for the Strallans. Never at Downton, not for the first year at least: he comes over with a message from Lord or Lady Grantham, which could have easily been delivered by post, or even discussed over the phone, and stays for tea. They have it in the servants' hall, though, never in her parlour. They sit across each other and sip the hot beverage in silence, eyes locked, all the other servants keeping polite distance between themselves and the quiet couple.
There's a story behind all this, a rumour rises one day, when it's her afternoon off and the maids become a little bolder in their whispered conversations. A love story.
The idea is met with frowns and quirked eyebrows. But isn't he married? Doesn't he have a daughter?
Ah, yes—but where IS his wife?
And why doesn't the child look like him?...
She visits Downton for the first time more than a year and a half since London, many months after she "came back". (She never comes back, not really, not the way she had been.) She turns the knob on the backdoor without thinking, lets herself in, breathes in the scent of this place. She'd been dreaming of it almost every night since; perhaps that's why she manages to keep her feelings in check now.
The servants' hall is almost empty, save for Anna, now wearing a dark dress and a key ring at her waist, feeding a small child with a spoon. The girl looks up at Elsie with eyes that don't resemble anyone she knows, and frowns.
There are tears and shaky smiles as Anna runs to her—an activity most unbecoming for a housekeeper, but Elsie couldn't possibly blame her for that now—takes her hand, urges her to sit in her old chair. She declines politely, eyes fixed on the child. "So this is—"
Anna nods and wipes the child's face with a clean cloth. "Elizabeth Carson. Yes."
Elizabeth Carson.
She remembers all too well how she first heard that name.
"She's got my name. That's the least I could do."
"Even though you know... you knew...?"
"Would you have me forsake her? Turn my back on her, especially now that her mother is gone?"
He knows her answer, so she doesn't waste the time to say it out loud. "What did you call her?"
"Elizabeth."
It feels like a slap across the face, hot and burning and making her want to cry, to scream her anger out at the Heavens, for all the injustice of the world.
When he finally comes down and enters the servants' hall, the child is sitting next to her, watching mesmerized as she scribbles down some notes in Anna's book, explaining in a quiet voice the things nobody has had the time (or the knowledge) to tell to the girl. He stops at the doorstep and takes the scene in, his heart breaking at the wrongness of it, and the easiness with which it could have been rearranged into an image of happiness he'd imagined for himself many year ago.
She senses his presence and looks at him, outwardly calm, torrents of emotions locked in the depths of her eyes. "Mr. Carson."
The little girl brightens up and reaches out to him, grinning. "Daddy!"
There it is again: the almost uncontrollable urge to scream.
"You are good with her," she tells him as they walk slowly down the path leading to the village, him having offered to walk her back to the station.
"I try. It wouldn't do her any good if I left her on her own."
She swallows, clasps her hands together. "Any news on...?" She leaves the question hanging; they both know it would be too much for her to finish it.
"Not for the last four month. She'd been seen in Brighton before that, with the same man; where they went from there, I cannot say."
"Do you suppose she'll ever come back? For Lizbeth? For..." (She doesn't say 'you'; neither of them believes it could happen, anyway.)
"I don't think so, no."
They walk together, perfectly synchronized, the way they had always been. The sun is bright and cold above their heads, or perhaps just bright, and the coldness they feel comes from them.
But that is only true on the outside. Because he knows how blazingly hot her heart could be, and she knows he would never stop loving her, even though they aren't free to speak about it anymore.
Things could still work out for them, perhaps: but it would have to be because of other people's suffering, and they don't want that, they never wanted that, not between her honour and his sense of responsibility. They could probably hold grudges: against the world, against each other; she more than him (why hadn't he asked her when he had the time, why did they decide to wait, to keep everything quiet, nonexistent, not giving themselves any ground to stand on and protest when they needed it): but that would be unwise, and make them even more bitter than they already are.
So they don't dwell on the past.
They don't discuss the future either. Secretly, they both hope they'd get to "retire together" after all: it won't happen soon, if it ever does, but the road hasn't been completely closed off yet. There are still so many things to consider, though: the little girl bearing him name, though not his blood; the woman, somewhere in the world, who had probably long since thrown away a ring Elsie should have been given many years ago; the looks people would give both of them if they crossed the line between surmise and certainty.
It is quite different to be a lover and a mistress, she thinks, counting her steps and breathing deeply in hope to catch a whiff of his cologne on the wind.
Being a lover is about how you feel, not what you do.
"When will I see you?" he asks as they stand on the platform, a polite, proper distance kept between their bodies. She focuses on a little wrinkle in the corner of his collar, wishes to smooth it away with her fingers, to lean in and let herself go.
Forget about the world. Forget everything that happened. Go back to the way they were—old and old-fashioned, comfortably stuck in a moment, a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime together, when how they felt was the most important thing in the world.
"Not soon enough," she says and blinks, looking at the train that crawls onto the track, puffing smoke and enveloping them in a cloud of steam for a second or two. She remembers something, words said very long ago—it feels like another life, another time, another place—and smiles at him, holding out her hand. "Don't tell me you'll miss me."
"I will, Mrs. Hughes. Very much."
She lets him hold her hand a little longer than strictly necessary, and squeezes his fingers before letting go.
This may be everything they ever get to share. It had been enough, once.
It will never be enough again.
She doesn't let herself hope.
But she knows she'll always be waiting for him, and he for her.
All wounds turn into scars, eventually.
The End