A/N: Sorry. But we are not done yet, just...yeah. Sorry. I'll post more after work tonight!
_before the worst_
His letters stop.
It is far from the first time it's happened and she fills the days with letters of her own. Answers questions in them he hasn't yet asked. She knows from experience that when they make it through the post to her, she will have more than one to read and she will look forward to that.
The weeks pass without word and the letters she writes get shorter. She hears from William and Mrs Patmore's sister tells the cook of the terrible fate of her nephew and still she hears nothing from him.
The face she puts on for the others is braver than she feels and her heart fills with dread more and more each day.
She busies herself with chores she hasn't had to do since she was a young housemaid. She scrubs the fireplaces and beats the carpets herself, takes down the mirrors and polishes them until her cloth squeaks against the glass and at night she falls asleep from exhaustion and gets a few hours rest before the dreams wake her and she starts her day again.
She is cleaning the pantry when little Jimmy the hall-boy says Her Ladyship has called for her.
She wipes her hands on a clean cloth and tucks stray hairs back into place on her way to the library.
She thinks this is about the hospital and she hasn't finished running the numbers but they can probably take another 20 before they will have to open more of the bedrooms and think about employing more temporary staff.
It is not Her Ladyship who calls for her to enter at her knock, but His Lordship and at his voice she feels the Earth shift beneath her as though it has ground to a sudden halt.
He is still in his uniform. His eyes are older, his cheeks missing the glow of healthy living. Her Ladyship stands at his side, her small fingers wrapped around his elbow.
Whatever is said next, she can be glad that he has returned if only for his wife and daughters' sakes.
Mrs Crawley stands beside them, the Dowager perched on an armchair.
"Who?" She says, the word torn from her lips against years of training. It could be William, Mr Barrow. Could be any of the other young men from the stables or the gardens and they would still have called on her first. But she knows in the silence from him this last month, knows that it is -
"Carson."
- and the world shifts into motion again beneath her, fast enough that she stumbles for balance.
Fingers grip her elbow and waist, hold her up and she looks at Mrs Crawley beside her and nods her thanks. She cannot bring herself to smile.
The fingers try to push her towards the seats, but she shakes her head, locks her knees and steadies herself. She pulls away and stands with her arms wrapped around her waist.
She nods for His Lordship to continue and focuses on his words; only now understands that it is Thomas too. They are missing, His Lordship says, the whole troop. She does not understand some of the terms he uses, but knows that he is being careful to let her think there is still some hope they will be found alive.
He tells her that he will tell the staff, once he has told the rest of the family. And even though that is really something she should do herself, she thanks him and leaves before they try again to make her sit.
Outside the library she stumbles and braces herself against the wall. Her heart is pounding, breath coming in harsh gasps and there are tears in her eyes she will not be able to stop. And so she runs, through the front doors and down the stairs, around the house to the gardens and then through those to the lake.
In the spot where she and Mr Bates threw that awful contraption away a few years - a lifetime - ago, her knees give out and she collapses onto the dirt. Her palms land flat against the ground and she leans forward on them, keeps her head down, her tears turning the dirt to mud.
In her head she says that he is missing. Just missing. But with each catch in her breathing and each silent sob she cannot make her body believe it.
It was always going to come down to this; from that moment at the station when she wanted him to look out for himself above anyone else, she had known that one day she would be crying over Mr Carson's absence.
They would have married after the war, she is sure of it. They would have been happy together.
Mr Bates finds her there long after her tears have dried, his own eyes red-rimmed and bleak.
"He will be back." She says as he stops beside her, leans against his cane and follows her eyes out across the water. He doesn't pretend that she could be talking about Thomas.
"Of course he will. He wouldn't leave," he pauses on the 'you' he won't say, but that she hears all the same, "Downton."
She nods, reaches out and pats his arm.