A/N: Though it's taken me a while, thank you so, so much for your kind reviews on the first chapter of this fic! I certainly wasn't anticipating such a response, and I appreciate it so much. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to bring you another chapter, but here it is!

Thanks to Silverduck for beta-ing! Hope you enjoy :)

Chapter 2

It was a couple of days since she had spoken to him, held his hand – now, it felt more like a dream. Of course, she had dreamt of him often in her troubled sleep, dreamt that everything was right between them; so it was not entirely beyond belief that she could have fabricated the whole thing in some exhausted stupor. She knew he was here, of course; that much was undeniable. But had she really sat with him and talked so freely with him? How had she dared to, after so many years of silence?

Mary had not dared to seek him out again, not with any great intent. A part of her (a large part) wanted to; the simple pleasure of sitting with him, talking with his hand in hers had given her more joy than anything had really, if she were honest, since the start of this detestable war. But she was afraid; afraid that they could not recapture it, wondering if perhaps she would be better just claiming that happiness and allowing it to sustain her rather than hope for anything more. Oh, but she wanted to...

Apparently, due to her success in actually holding some form of sustained conversation with him, it had been decided that Mary was now the family's spokesperson to Matthew; much to her chagrin. Yes, she wanted to talk to him again, but under their own terms, thank you very much! At her father's request, she now sought him out again. It took her several attempts to garner the strength of will to approach him as she felt great discomfort wandering among the soldiers, her own house now seeming more their territory than her own; a fact which bothered her severely.

Tentatively, she stepped into the games room, which once had been her father's precious library. It sickened her a little; to see it so changed now unnerved her, all these strangers with their strange injuries… She was becoming used to it, but still a cold, unsettled feeling crept over her in the midst of them like this. A large pool table filled the centre of the room; tables and chairs strewn with cards and chequer-boards and dice lay scattered around the edges. The air was thick here with the smell of antiseptic and cloying bandages. Eventually she saw him; sitting alone with his head bent in concentration over a book… and that ghastly wheelchair… Instinctively her back straightened and she held herself a little higher, as if to rise above it all, and made her way towards him. She had to ungracefully push past one or two men, flashing them uncomfortable, apologetic smiles as she went, until she reached him.

Of course, he'd been aware of her long before she was standing next to him. She seemed to ever hover on the periphery of his perception; unsure always whether she was real or whether it was the phantom of her haunting his mind… Their encounter the other day had shaken him slightly. In fragments, he had remembered the circumstances of his injury – that he had been pouring out his soul to her, never intending it to come to anything – and then all at once he was here again and she was real and beside him; no longer a vision of hatred and comfort but really there. She had taken him aback; he had not known how to deal with her and, caught so unawares, had found himself responding to her quite naturally. Now, though, having had time to process her presence, he was tormented (as he had feared) by the sudden reality of her, as opposed to the phantom Mary of his war-scarred mind.

As she drew to his side, his eyes flicked upwards to acknowledge her; he made no other sign of it than to slowly close his book and place it on the table in front of him. His hands rested on it a moment, before drawing back to fold in his lap. What was he to say to her? What could he say? And so he waited, taking a breath and raising an eyebrow slightly though his gaze remained fixed on the table.

Mary stood a moment, tapping her hands lightly, before deciding this was as much of an invitation as she was going to get. And so she sat, her breath shallow with nerves at their surroundings and the atmosphere and that unbearable tension that seemed to prickle between them.

"Hello!" Her greeting was overly bright, in compensation for the troubled, wary expression on his face and her own discomfort.

"Hello, Mary."

"How are you today?" The habitual question, normally asked merely as a polite formality, suddenly carried extra weight. He raised his eyes then and they bored coldly into her. Mary paled and her eyes cast down. "I'm sorry, Matthew."

He blinked, frustrated at himself.

"Don't apologise." He did not blame her for not knowing how to address him. The whole thing was utterly mad. "I'm quite alright, relatively speaking."

An uncomfortable silence immediately formed itself. He made no effort to meet her eyes, and consequently Mary didn't quite know where to look, eventually settling her gaze on his shoulder.

"Papa hoped you might join us for dinner this evening." Her hands twisted nervously in her lap.

"Did he."

Mary blinked, frowning gently.

"Yes – well, you are family, Matthew! It... seems really quite ludicrous for you to have been here a week or more and not dined with us!"

"I suppose it is."

Yes, the whole thing was ludicrous. He was family – one of them. But he was also there as a recuperating soldier – one of them; not quite belonging in either camp. He was not there as family, as a guest, there on a social pleasantry. Yet equally he was not there merely as another nameless soldier – he was all the while uncomfortably aware that he was sitting in the midst of his own inheritance. And it left him in a horrible sort of limbo. Each side tried to drag him in... Dinner with the family, cards and jokes with the men... Neither succeeding. He just didn't fit. Though each side tried to accept him, they were incompatible, and he could not accept them. Contemplating this, he continued to glower silently at the table.

The turmoil of his thoughts was evident on his face. Mary watched him, lips parted a fraction, feeling terribly awkward. He would not be pressed, she sensed that. The silence was like a solid wall between them... How had it been so easy last time? How had she so easily stretched her hand out and touched him? It was quite unthinkable now. How had she known what to say to him?

She supposed the topics had been obvious, then... His injury, could she tell his mother, reproving his own self-pitying attitude... Now all that had been covered, what on earth could she say to the man she loved but had not spoken to for three years, who had been through so much as to render him so alien to her? To a man who was so very much a soldier now? What had they possibly in common to talk about? He was obviously deeply troubled – was he so haunted by his experiences?

"Are – are you thinking about... out there?" She tried, hoping to make some connection with him. To show him she cared, that she was not oblivious to it all.

He was and he wasn't, he supposed. That awful damned limbo again. He was not all here, and not all there... He shrugged.

"It's hard not to," he eventually muttered.

Mary's head dipped in a slight nod. The silence fell thick again. Mary bit her lip. There was nothing in his reply, nothing to latch onto and spin into further conversation... It was so difficult! Eventually, her curiosity drove her and she stammered out,

"Is it so very terrible out there as the papers make out?" She paused and took a breath; even to her the question – once heard aloud – seemed insensitive and ridiculous. "Of course it is, I am sure, the evidence would speak for itself, but... No-one ever speaks of it, you see."

Of course they didn't, he thought. They couldn't. His lips pursed into a hard line. It was the impossible question... He refused to feed her the same platitudinous drivel as to his mother, yet he could not, would not speak of the reality of it to her. The dreadful truth wasn't hers to bear. She was looking at him so expectantly... but what could he tell her of it? Nothing! Desperately his mind searched for some way he could respond to her – he wanted to talk to her, to spill his heart out but it was just impossible, and he hated himself for it.

He could do nothing but at last raise his eyes to hers, his gaze cold but troubled, tense, pleading... There was so much behind his eyes that was simply unreadable. All he'd done, all he'd seen, all he wanted to say but couldn't.

"Oh," she breathed quietly. She understood.

Of course it had been a silly thing to ask him.

The silence stretched and stretched, growing quickly intolerable. To drag the stilted conversation (could one really call it a conversation?) on seemed a painful prospect, but... it was not as if she (or indeed he) could simply get up and leave. Mary was still determined to get something from it, from him – some response or reaction beyond his flat answers. His despondency was heartbreaking.

After a minute or so of strained silence, broken only by the soft tap of Matthew's hand on the arm of his chair, Mary thought she had at last hit upon some common ground between them, something lighter to speak of than the state of things 'out there'.

"My mother arranged a dance for all the soldiers here, last month," she said brightly. A forced, cheerful smile was on her lips, not quite reaching her eyes as really, she did not feel like smiling. She felt like holding him, slapping him, shaking him, throwing her arms around him, anything to drag him back to her... But of course that was impossible. This would have to do.

Matthew glanced up.

"Yes, my mother wrote to me of it." His lips twitched. Mary's heart leapt a little. "It sounded a great success."

"It was!" Now, her smile reached her eyes. Carried away by her (really unremarkable) success, she blithely continued. "What a shame you didn't arrive here a little earlier! You could have –"

Her face paled, her smile dropping as her words caught up with her all at once. His expression had hardened and he glared once more at his book. If she had dared to look down to his lap she would've seen his hand there, clenched into a fist of frustration. "I'm sorry, Matthew..."

The only sign of his acknowledgement was a slight twitch of his lip, a clench of his jaw.

Oh, it was intolerable! Mary expelled a sharp sigh, which only served to rile their frustration further. Neither of them were angry with the other – oh, it would be easy enough for them to be – but really they both knew that the fault lay with their own utter inability to find anything of normality to say to each other. Mary's annoyance at herself was so great she felt she might weep. Every time she opened her mouth, the wrong thing came out – oh, she wished she had never bothered! For his part, Matthew appreciated her trying – he knew she really was trying – but it was simply impossible to respond.

The air was thick and stifling. While Matthew continued to stare resolutely down in front of him, Mary nervously cast her eyes around. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, she felt so aware of the unwelcome (to her, at least) presence of others in the room, felt almost ashamed of herself that they were sitting here in public and failing so miserably... All at once it was absolutely unbearable. Maybe… Maybe it was their surroundings; the other men, the chatter, the noise, making it difficult for them… She felt so out of place in here. Yes, maybe… She sucked in a deep breath and lightly slapped her hands onto her knees, assuming a bright, brusque attitude.

"It's terribly stifling in here, Matthew; I don't know how you can bear it for any length of time!" As if he had any real choice, he thought bitterly. Mary offered him one last olive branch. "Would – would you like to take a walk out in the air for a while?"

A walk.

Though a small thread at the back of Matthew's mind knew she didn't mean it cruelly – he knew perfectly well what she meant, and it was a perfectly understandable slip of the tongue – his natural instinct flared to take offense. Everything about his injury and the wheelchair caused offence to him. As soon as the word 'walk' left her lips his eyes snapped coldly to hers, his whole body tensed, his lips pressed thinly together, twitching down at the corners.

Oh, how she wished she had never spoken! She wished she'd never bothered coming to him at all! As his accusing gaze hit her, almost like a physical blow, Mary gasped out a small breath. She stared at him for one moment, filled with despair at his demeanour… and could bear it no longer. She had tried, and tried, and rarely felt so awkward or humiliated in her life to try so hard and get so little back… Her chair shunted noisily backwards as she stood up quickly. Biting back the overbearing distress she could feel rising in her throat, her head shook almost imperceptibly at him before she whipped around and fled the room.

Instantly, he wished he could retract his reaction when he saw the hurt in her eyes. His expression softened immediately into apology, but too late to make a difference. His lips parted as she hurriedly left, almost calling out to her…

With a harsh sigh of frustration and effort, Matthew rallied himself and lowered his hands to the wheels of his chair. Grimacing sharply at the pain the sudden movement caused, he gritted his teeth and tried to follow her – his path blocked by men and tables and… How unwieldy the blasted thing was! His breath hissed through his teeth as his scarred arm dragged against the back of a chair.

Finally, he reached the hallway, only to see her back disappearing up the stairs. Where he could not follow. He glanced around him, then,

"Mary!" he called up, his voice tinged with desperation.

It was too late.

Sighing bitterly in frustration, his fist thumped angrily down onto the arm of his wheelchair. He wanted to break it, smash it, rid himself of it. He spun back around, gasping aloud in pain from the effort and, frowning darkly, made his way back to solitude.

TBC

A/N: Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to know what you thought, so as always reviews are very gratefully received! Thank you! :)